Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

hopes he may have had of winning the AMA Ll.S, Superbike National Championship. Magee watched the proceedings, but didn't take part. Desma Ducati's Dave Sadowski had packed it up and gone home on Saturday morning. On a day in which a total of six races were held, the Superbike Nati onal got underway at 4:30 p .m. under sunny skies with a slight breeze blo wing up aga ins t the nearb y San Bernadin o mounta ins. It wa s James wh o got the jump on the field wh en the green flag w as thrown. And it was Corser who was caught napping on the Ducati. "1 don 't know if 1 missed the green flag, or if everyo ne went before it," said Corser, wh o is more accusto med to the starting light proced ure used in Australian road races. To make matters worse, Corser was involved in a collision with Quarterley in the second com er. "He almost put me off into the bridge," Corser said. "Don ' t yo u kn ow , that' s his job ," Crevier said with a chuckle in the post race press conference. "That's why he's here." " It must be - he's do ne that to me the last three meetings," Corser added . In his defense, Quarterley said : "I'd say he (Corser) ran .into me. 1 had the line and was trying to hold him off and he tried stuffing it in - but it's nothing 1 wouldn't have done." . Getting back to racing... The first lap end ed with James leading Smith, Schwa, Crev ie r, Corser, Edwards, Kipp, Stev ens, Picotte an d Quarterley. The Ha rley-Davidson fans in attendance were d isap pointed early Colin Edwards II leads Troy Corser and Takahlro Sohwa during their heated battle at the front of the U.S. Superblke Series race at the Pomona Falrplex. as Miguel DuHamel completed only one lap before the VRlOOO developed wh at team manager Steve Schiebe described as " an unid entified fuel system problem." DuHamel's teammate, Fritz Kling, went two more laps before his VR1 000 slowed to a stop with a shif t-sha ft seal problem. By the end of the second lap Corser was up to third, and on the third lap he moved into second place behind James. On the fourth lap, the Au stralian took the lead. Edwards wa sn't about to show mu ch p atience, either, as he qu ickly pou nced on his teammate James head ing into th e hairpin at the end of th e back stra ight on the fourth lap. Two laps later and the Texan was in front of the Australian as the two young and talented racers from different continents led the field. On the eighth lap, Sohwa was up to Wh at went ?.! _ wrong· W hen the racers arri ved at the Pomona Fairplex facility on Thursday morning they found a race track that wasn't to the ir liki ng. What was wrong? For one, there were pedestrian bridges located dangerously dose to the 2.1-mile race track - in impact areas on 'th e 'exits of the two fastest corners on the track. In ad diti on, a chain-link fence bordered the track, and insome cases that was the only thing that stood between a crashed motorcycle and spectators. The major problem, according to most, was the track's surface. It was bumpy and uneven in the majority of the 13 comers, adding more concern as to the positioning of things such as the bridges, telephone and light poles, and chain-link fences. Some riders went out for practice on Thursday - most opted not to. The first official practice session came and went on Friday morning with the racers fanning a sort of picket line to deter anyone from exiting the pits and taking to the race track - and the track remained empty, for the most part, for all of Friday . "It's bumPY as sin," ,Team Mirage's Dale Quarterley said after his initial outing on the track on Thursday, "I pulled in to sit and think about it. I thought, 'Is it worth it?' r went back out and got going faster and the bike started working better over the bumps.j Ninetypetc~nt of the track is really not all that bad. Coming out of turns six and seven C is almost impossible. There are some hoovers (bumps) out there that send you out of- ' the seat-and aim you at the bridge. The bridges have got to go. Coming ou t of the carousel it wants to drift, and it'll drift you right into the second bridge. There's also a ' light pole here and there that could be a problem. It's just one more thing the riders have had to put up with this year. We're sick of it. We want to make this the stopping ground. "It's not up to us to bail the promoter out. It's the AMA's job to approve these places," added Quarterley. "That's all on the emotional side . On the business end, you can't kill this guy (the promoter) because he fell short. Now you've got to think, wha t's it going to take to get us through this weekend? If they remove the bridges, put up some more hay bales and air fence, I'd like to run. Some want to use this as a precedent; some don't want to ride no matter what happens. Hopefully, we'll decide by the end of tOday, This is by far the worst place we've been to. 1 keep looking at it from the 'b usiness side, but I don't want to IdA somebody to do it. The promoters seem willing to ' do,eve ' the~< can. It's different than at Charlotte last y~ - they threw us to the •. sharkS , this guy sat down and laid out a facility. He did everything he needed to . do - he jUst missed the boat-All plans are like that. We need to work with this guy and ' they need to start working now for next year because this isn't a market we can afford to lose. Whatever everybody decides to do, I'll do it, too. If they don't want to run, we won't run. We just don't want to hurt anybody.' The riders ended up asking for some changes, and they got those changes. They wanted the pedestrian bridges moved, the starting line re-positioned so that it sent the third an d trailed the Ed warda/ Corser dice by 1.74 seco nds. By the 10th lap , Sohwa had whittled that margin down to nothing, pu lling up to the rear of the Ducati to make it a three-wa y figh t for the lead. The battle up front stayed that way until the 17th lap when Edwa rds was suddenly forced off the race track and out of the race for the lead - just after losing the lead to Corser in the first comer. "Somebody needs to sit d own and talk to thelappers," Edw ards said later. "They need to first let them know that they are lappers. It was some squid on an ROO. Corser went by him and 1 figured he saw him . I flicked it inside and h e (the lapped r id er) cam e in a nd choppe d me off. 1 bent it in harder and hit the hay bale on the inside with my head and shoulde r. Then I hit his ba ck tire and went ou t into the dirt." From tha t point onward, the race for th e lead wa s betw een Co rse r and Schwa, with the former putting a second on the latter on the 22nd lap when Sohwa was balked by a lap ped rider in turns on e and two . On the 26th lap Edwards crashed, unhurt, in the chica ne, his Yamaha catchi ng on fire, prompting the race to be stopped. ''I'm pissed off," Edwards said. "1 don't know what happened. Something start ed p issing oil. It didn't blow up because 1powered through the next corner. It got a little loose the lap before, bu t this time as soon as 1flicked it left it went awa y. 1 was able to flick it right, but as soon as I went left there was no traction - period." Cor ser, as al ways, was lo w-key in victo ry: "The re's not too many places around here to pass . 1just went by them anywhere 1 could . 1 wasn't confident, . riders dow n the drag strip and into tum one rather than into the funnel-like chicane, an d they wanted mo re ha y bales. Nothing, though, could be done about the racing surface itself - which for the most part featured new sea ler on top of old, bump y, parkin g lot pavement. On Friday night, Race West Prod uctions' Bill Marcel and Bob Bellino, the prom oters of the event, had crews come in to remove the bridges and add hay bales to the impact areas. On Saturday, rain was hed away qualifying, with more and more riders threatening that they still weren't going to race come Sunday. A rider's meeting on Saturday turned ugly when AMA's vice pres ident of marketing, Tom Mueller, turned down the rid ers' request that the race be a non-points paying event. "It's a personal rider choice," Mueller said . " If you don' t want to pa rticipate, please don't impede those who want to. It's going to happen. We will run for points. Nationals pay points and all the other promoters look at that. They want to be assured that we run point-paying Nationals." On Saturday night, the top riders came up with a plan that would see them stop after the first two laps of the race, and then start again - effectively making it a non-race and instea d an exhibition. This idea was quickly vetoed by team owners Rob Muzzy and Eraldo Ferracd. Muzzy had earlier told his team that if the bridges were removed they would race. "I can't tell them how to race, but 1can tell them they have to race," Muzzy said. Despite the rhetoric, even the .most vocal of the riders ended up raciIlg. Only Kevin Magee, Dave Sadowski, Jon Cornwell, AI Salaverria ' ~d Mark Foster elected not to participate. . "Our ide a of eliminating points wasn't possible," Harley-Davidson's Miguel DuHamel said . "A few are not riding and I respect that. I can't race here . 111 go out and put on a show and hopefully I'll wa lk awa y from here. We mad e a stand - we showed them that we can unite. The AMA now knows there's a problem here. The promoter has been trying. He and the spectators are going to get a show. You've got to draw some positives out of this. The missing link here is communication. The riders should only have to be concerned with things like tire compounds - not safety issues. Some will go out and race hard - 1only hope they don't get hurt." "By Lagu na Seca there will be a new plan on how these th ings get done and we will upda te the riders," Mueller said on Sunday morning. "We'll take a look at the approval process and we want representation from the riders. We'll fly in early with them to look at things like this. We just can 't fix things overnight. All I can say is that they should believe me until 1 lie to them, and 1 haven't lied to them yet." ." , So just how did the Pomona Pairplex get approved to begin with? "I don't know," Mueller said . "There's a two-year history here . There was a promoter change and a huge communication breakdown. We have to be more pro-active about getting in early and looking at these things. If we want to be a w()rld model for superbike racing, we have to have some control over our groups. We've got to have everything under controL We have to work harder and our communication has to be better." .... ...... I-< ~ 11

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