Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Damon Huffman (20) came through the pack In the 125cc feat ure and challenged Ryan Hughes (22) for the lead on the las t lap. In an effort to pass Hughes on the outside, Huffman's rear wheel slid out, resulting In a lowside just two turns from the finish. Huffman remounted just In time to salva ge second In front of Craig Decker. (Below) Mike laRocco (7) also took advantage of McGreth's flat tire and finished second Inthe 250cc main. Steve Lamson (4) ended up fourth. through the 22-rider field after a midpack start. On the last lap, Huffman pulled out the stops and gave it his all in hopes of passing Hughes. At one po int the two riders battled side by side, but Hughes mana ged to sl.am the door shut on the factory-backed Suzuki rider in the next turn. With time rapidly running out, Huffman tried; once again, to pass Hughes in a fast, sweeping right-hand tu rn, only to lose the back end of his Suzuki and slide ou t righ t in front of the mechan ic 's area . Hughes, cruising through the last two turns, sailed across the finish line to record his second win of the series. H uffman dusted himself off to take second, while Honda of Troy's Craig Decker occupied the bottom step on the rostru m , coming in third for his best finish of th e season. Completing the top fiv e were Splitfire /Pro Circuit /Kawasaki teammate Pedro Gonzalez and Englishma n James Dobb. Leaving Seattle, McGrath still enjoys a ra ther heft y 46-point lea d o ve r Kiedrowski, who moved back into second pla ce in the series point standings , relegating teammate LaRocco to third . Kiedrowski has 242 points to LaRocco's 240. A distant fourth; with 193 points, is Emig . Like McGrath, H uffman enjoys a seemingly uncatchable points lead with 134 points over Decker's 94. Hughes is third with 91 points. I I 250cc In the first of two 250cc hea t races, La mso n started t hings o ff with the holeshot and led for half the race before giving way to Kiedrowski. The Kawasaki rider block-passed Lamson in a tight turn and had no problems hanging on to the top spot for the remaining four laps, though Lamson kept a watchful eye on Kiedrowski the whole wa y. Team Noleen/Sizzler Restaurants/ Xtreme/Yamaha rider Kyle Lewi s ran third for most of the race before coasting to a stop with a broken chain. "A rock got wedged between the sp rocket and the chain causing it to break," Lewis said. With Lewis out of the picture, Team Suzuki riders Ezra Lusk and Jimm y Button fought hard over third place . They battled back and fourth until Button broke free and took the checkered flag ·in third. Finishin g fifth, one spot out of a transfe r, was Lewis' teammate Larry Br o o ks, w hile Suzuki teammates Denny Stephenson and Phil Lawrence finished sixth a nd seventh, respectively. Surprise non-qualifi ers incl uded LaRocco, who pulled off the track afte r crashing and bending his handlebars, and Tea m Suzuki's Br ia n Swink, who was slowed after being involved in a first-turn mishap. Both riders had to rid e the semis. In the second heat race, Ward and Emig went into the first turn side by side but Emig had the lead coming out. Three laps later, though, Emig was passed by long-time rival McGrath, who had gated third. McGrath's teammate Doug Henry followed in the champ's wake and soon had control of second, rel egating Emig to third. It looked as though McGrath had the heat race all bu t won until Henry o u t-gasse d h im through a section of whoops just one turn before the finish-lin e jump. Henry had the better line in the last tu rn a nd su r ged ahead for the surp rise w in. Emig held on for third, jus t a hea d of Ward . Team Splitfire/Pro Ci rc u it / Kawasa ki 's Jimmy Gadd is missed a direct transfer by one, finishing fifth. In the first of two semi races, where the top five riders transfer, LaRocco . cruised to a n easy win, fo ll owed b y Stephenson, Brooks, Lawrence and privateer Bud dy Antunez. A crash while run ning fou rth sen t Kyle Lewis to the Last Cha nce Qualifier. Gaddis led from start to finish in the second semi. Doug Dubach ran second for a while before getting passed by DGY Racing's Jeff Dem ent, who ended up finishing a distant second to Gad dis. Dubach held on for third, while Honda of Troy teammates Erik Kehoe a nd Todd DeHoop rounded out the top five. Two transfer positions were still up for grabs in the LCQ and were eventu ally filled by Swink and Davis Racing's Mike Chamberlain. Chamberlain led all but the last lap when Sw ink made his move. Finishing one sp o t out of the transfers for the second time that nigh t was Lewis, who took a d istant third. A pair of Hondas, one ridden b y McGrath and the other by Lamson, went into the first turn handlebar to handlebar at the start of the 2a-lap feature, but it was McGrath who surged ahead and took command. Another Honda, this one ridden by Henry, trailed the 20- would be i t. I was n' t goi n g to let him get any closer." But McGrath's plan didn't work out as he had hoped. "Just after Skip (Norfolk, McGrath's mechanic) gave me the three- l.ap sign, I came off a triple jump and the back end felt we ird ," said McGrath. "Then I realized I had a fl.at back tire. I jus t had to play it safe; I wasn't going to push it with a flat tire." McGrath slowed drastica lly d uring the las t tw o laps and both Kiedrowski and LaRocco, the only riders who have a chan ce of beating him ou t of the championship, strolled by McGrath and his cri p pl ed Honda. Luckily for McGrath, he had built up enough ins urance to hold on to at least thir d ahead of Lam son. "He rode smart," said Kiedrowski of McGrath. "He let me by and didn't push it - that's how you win championships. Even without the flat, I think I could've had him. " "Ah, it kind of sucks," said McGrath. "Seattle always gets me. I've always had rider field after having problems in the first tum. In t yp ical McGrath fa shion, the defending champ immediately opened up a sizeable lead on the pack , while Kiedrowski settled into third after passing Stephenson. Stephenson would run a mong the leaders for five lap s before running off th e track and getting track banners wrapped up in his rear wheel. It took Kiedrowski seven laps to pass Lamson, on ly to di scover that leader McG rat h wa s all but gone. Approxima tely six seconds separated McGrath from Kied rowski at this point, and the champagne wa s being readied to be popped b ac k in th e Honda pits. But Kiedrowski wasn 't abou t to give up the championship chase just yet. "I had to ge t him (McGra th)," said Kiedrowski. "I didn't wa n t to see him clinch the title; it wo uld be a shame if he clinched it with two raceS left. 1 just kept pushing the whole time." Slowly bu t surely, Kiedrows ki whittled away at McGrath 's lead until it was less than thr ee seconds. "I was usin g a lot of energy working m y way up through traffic," sai d Kiedrowski, "b ut all of a sud den - boom - he was right there." "He gai ned a lot on me - especially one lap," sa id McGra th. " When he got to w it hin three second s, that some sort of bad luck here, bu t you can 't take an ything away from him (Kiedrowski). H e was catching me and riding good." After starting th e ra ce in seventh, LaRocco spent most of his time in third before mov ing up a notch when McGrath got the flat. After getting passed by LaRocco on the eighth lap, Lamson cruised in fourth the re st of the way . "I tried to keep everybod y in sigh t," said Lamson. "But there were two pla ces on the track that they were just a little bit faster than me. After 20 lap s, th at' s like giving up 10 seconds, and you just can't do that. Still, I'm happy; I'm getting my starts down and my speed is there ." Finishing a distant fifth behind Lamson was Ward who, like McGrath, was slowed by a rear flat tire. "I got it (the flat) abou t the halfway point, af te r La Ro cco pa sse d me, " said crowd favo rite Wa rd, who is originally from the Seattle area. "There was a lot of jun k in th e d irt, like reb ar , railroad spikes. Once I got the flat, 1 was casing it over all the triples; I was getting a little nervous. It (the tire) really screwed me up mentally. But I'm happy. I've had two top-five finishes in a row, an d that was my goal here tonight." Emig spent the latter part of the race mixing it up for sixth with Henry, who -.:t< Q', Q', ..-<

• Cover