Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Kenny Roberts' Yamaha TZ700 (Above) An exhausted but jubilant Roberts uncorks the bUbbly after pulling off a last-second pass on Team Harley Davidson's Corky Keener (right). " I heard that scre aming s.o.b. and I knew it was all over," Keener said later. Future three-time Grand National Champion Jay Springsteen (left) finished th ird. Roberts remembers T correct parts, considering Cham pion only made five kits before the AMA banned the machine. And this machine, being a facto ry-built and developed racer, was in some ways very different from the kitted bikes. "While the ot her guys built theirs like dirt trackers, we built ours like a o th ose bo rn too late t o have s h a r e d - e ven vica r io us ly - in the t r iumphs of Du ke . Hailwood and Agostini , there is just one ro a d racer who stand s supreme'. His fig ure bestrides both 7 0s and '80s, and for a while there, if Kenny Roberts didn't turn up, it couldn't really be called a race . Roberts' greatest feat individual event" but in year, which by no cainci The rookie from the States Jj rnplacent racing establishment wide open...most especially the incumbent double-champion Barry Sheene. For Roberts did the unthinkable - not only did he plan to be champion at his first attempt, but h e w as doing it in both the 250 and 500cc classes . History re cords that in order to s u cce e d in the 500cc class, Roberts had to abandon the 250s, but succeed he d id, in 1978 and for th e next two yea rs runn ing . And if h e di d n' t w in for t h e next thr ee years, it was always fo r so me reason other than his ability. Even when Fredd ie Spen cer came along in road racer," Carruthers said. "That bike came right out of our road race shop." Wright s p en t a good deal of time searching through the attics and garages of racers of the era, trying to find correct decals and other bits. With time and the help of many individuals, such as former Roberts mechanic Merrill Vander- 1983, Rober ts was s till th e rider e veryone loo ke d up to . Bu t w hen asked to nom in at e his ow n race of a lifetime, he immedi ately chooses not a road race, but one in th e d irt, an oval tracker fro m his d ays of racing in th e USA be fore he hit th e World Championship tr ail. "I d idn't really have one," Roberts says. "But if yo u' re gonna m ake me choose, I'll not be looking so much for a race that I won, but one th at was challenging both physically and mentally. I guess it would have to be the Indy Mile. " Nevertheless, Roberts did win the Indi anapolis Mile on August 23, 1975, by inches from Harley-Davidson rider Corky Keener. Yet it was not the narrowness of his victory that made th e race such a milestone, but the bike he did it on. It was the legendary one-time victory of a mongrel with plenty of bark and very big teeth, an unholy marriage of the world's most powerful road racing twostroke with the cabby, dusty realism of the dirt tracks. It was the Yamaha TZ700 flat tracker, and with Roberts on board it made history in the dust under the arc lights of the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds dirt track oval. Roberts takes up the sU1IY- "The Yamaha dirt trackers I'd been riding were built around their 650 parallel twin, and they were not really competitive with the Harleys especially on a mile. It was a real' struggle. "Doug Schwerma built chassis for us, and he was the one who decided to build one for the four-cylinder twostroke. I thought he was crazy. I agreed that the powerband was good, but I couldn't agree that we could get any traction with 120 horsepower. Doug built it anyway. Sure w as no other way Yamaha had of putting the pressu re on them H arleys. " I never sa w it until I got to Ind y. Kel Carruthers had assembled it in San Diego. Phew ! It weighed less than a Harley bu t it had 50 more horse power . "As I expected, traction w as a big p rob lem. It'd spin the wheel anywhere above idl e. It was a son-of-a-bitch to slice, Wright collected and assembled pieces, and finished the machine just prior to 1994. Flash to the 1994 U.S. GP: it was behind the Marlboro Roberts garage that The King was reunited with the bike for the first time in almost 20 years. Roberts was obviously surprised and somewha t shaken by seeing his old steed in the flesh . He kept repeating. "I can't believe it, just can't bel ieve it." For Roberts, a man who has done and seen p len ty, the sight of this old machine u nnerved him. He laughed nervously and spoke in broken sentences as the memories - both good an d bad - rushed b a ck. Robert s wanted to own the m ach in e. Wrigh t wasn't rea d y to part with the noble racing steed just yet, but when that day came, said he would sell it. Kel Carru thers, wearing a blood red Cagiva uni form, walked over and took a gander at the machine as we ll. He examined m any of th e p ieces individ ually, including the footpeg and brake arm which were smashed into a wall at San Jose w hen Roberts hadn't been ab le to p u ll the machine back from the edge; the Ken Maely welds still visible from an on-site recons tru ction . He looked at th e TZ700 pipes and the unique mounting system he had built to enable the exhaust to tuck in tighter than the kit allowed, and the places he relocated the engine later that season. He said to no one and everyone, " It' s the bike," and then walked back to Doug Chandler's V585, yet another in a line of machines he would help create but would never own. There was talk of Roberts doing a lap of honor on the machine at Laguna Seca; someone mentioned that th ey thought Roberts might fit into Luca Cadalora's or Daryl Beattie's leathers. However, after a few moments' consideration, most thought it a bad idea . He had escaped with his wits intact 20 years ago. It was best no t to push the issue. «~ ride, no wa y yo u could be consisten t... tim es varied by two or three se conds a lap. It all dep ended on trying to get it to hook up. "I had a kill button on th e hand gri p that killed one cylin de r. That cut off about 30 horsepower , and I wou ld hold it in when I hit the power in th e tum. Then when I released it , co m ing o u t of tu m tw o o r four onto the straigh taway - it was like a turbo, ano the r ru sh of power . "The qualifyin g heats were d ifficult enoug h, 1 barely made the main event. When that came around, 1 was last off the line. Couldn't get traction." Then came the move that meant Roberts had made the shrieking monster all his own. Instead of staying on the groove on the inside of the oval, where the pack of four-strokes was thundering and elbowing in the usual way, he chose to go the long way round. Since he was wheel-spinning anyway, might as well do it out in the cushion where it's softer. "I went wide all tile way," Roberts recounts. It would be nice to say that his race had comprised a single, long. sustained rooster-tailing drift that lasted all of 25 miles. However, the one film that exists of the event shows that it was more a series of staggering whoops and dives, Roberts fighting the bike every inch of the way. "The race was 25 laps long:' Roberts says. "I only led one lap. The last. I won by a few inches. "But that's not why it was such an important race for me. It would have been the same if I'd come in 10th. But I guess tHat's the longest anyone ever rode that close to the limit." Roberts pauses, then remembers how the crowd had risen to the occasion. "Tha t was the only time I can remember the U.S. crowd s actually got up off the bleachers:' Roberts says. "I coul d n' t believe it. It w as like if a German rider had w on the World Champion ship a t H ock enheim - ther e wer e so many people. I'll alwa ys remem ber that." Michael Scott

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