Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

:INTHEJAPES : By Scott Rousseau ' v e often felt that life is a lot like standing in a long line. When you start out, you're at the end of the line, - and as life progresses you look back and y ou begin to realize that you 're not stand ing at the end anymore. There are a lot of people, pl aces and experiences behind you . I've used this philosophy to my advantage several times as motivation .to accomplish my goals, but sometimes this stand-in-line approach wor ks against itself. Take for example, m y recent promo. tion to Associate Editor and primary reporter for the AMA Grand N at ional Championship dirt tra ck series . In a way, it was something that I'd wanted since being hired as an Assistant Editor al m o s t two y ea rs ago . But a s time pa ssed , I figured I' d never get the ch ance to stand in that line, so I went about my business as the "lo cals guy" and was more than content to cover the "larger" events on the Southern Californ ia Speedway ci rc uit lik e th e U .S. National, the Am erican.'Fin al, the U.s. Ma sters and California Stat e Championships, and ride the all the local eve nts in between. Through co nsta n t elbow rubbing with the top gu ys on the Northern and Sou them Ca lifornia circu its as well a s th e ov erse as s ta rs, I b ecame quite familiar with them. We quickly established the ground rules on the profes sion al side, so tha t th ey knew what m y job was and what m y job wasn' t, and that friends are friends but busin ess is bu sin ess. It was neve r a problem with any of th em , e v en the guys who I thought m ight be tougher to deal with. I never wanted them to be ' my friends, or tak e me fishing or so me thing. I sim ply treated them like th e p ro fes si onals that I beli eve th em to be and asked for th e sa me thing in return. Together we built up the frien d ly working relationships . that I feel ar e so extremely important in thi s business . And the more that I got to kn ow them, the more that familiarity placed me in the middle of the line. With all that in mind, I was hardly excited wh en [ finally did ge t the call to go dirt tracking. Don't get me wrong I've been closely foll owing the sport since Randy Goss was s till a HarleyDavidson factory rider. But th e main challenge that I had faced and over come I 25 YEARSAGO... JUNE1 6,1970 a n a d ia n s Dave Sehl and Maurice Faser ca m e to Am eric a to ni ce dirt track . Sehl ma d e the Na tional main event a t the limesto ne d irt track in Louisvill e, Kentucky, rid ing to the wi n, and Fraser won the Am ateur even t... Ora nge Count y International Racew ay hosted an A.F.M. roa d race and Art Baumann was on hand wit h his 500cc Suzuki and won the Open Grand Prix eve nt...Joel Robert ove r too k fell ow Belgia n Syl vain - Geb oer s in the World Cha m pionship 250cc Mot ocross series w hen the riders cla shed in th e It a li a n round .. .l n the 500cc world motocross, the Swedish GP w ent to Husky. Chris Hammargren w as rid ing the Swe dish-made machine and took the victory after Bengt Aberg and Arne Kring cra sh ed while fighting for the lead ...Spaniard Santi Herrero took C in the tiny speedway arenas - namely, getting to know the people on who m I would be reporting - w ould now pree sent itself on a .mu ch larger scale at the Grand National miles and half miles . It's not lik e I had no idea who th e rid ers were or that I wouldn't know enough about the sport to ask them. I wo u ld be standing at the end of the line aga in. I s t ill wasn 't so ld o n the idea of "experiencing" I likened it to the difference between watching a hocke y game on TV or having season tickets right up 'agains t the glass. The militant fans kn ow when a player's heart isn't in the game , and I felt that th e dirt tr ack fa ns who scan the pages of Cycle New s every week would be watchin g to se e how I p erformed. "Hey, wha t' s th e matter with that guy? Trade him! He's outta here!" I certainly had everythi ng going my. wa y so far . The people tha t I'd met had been great, and I had the good fortune of seeing and reportin g on so me truly mem orable ex perie nc es already . Like Springer's 41st wi n at Pomon a - almost 10 years after number 40 cam e at Syracus e. Or not havin g seen a' repeat wi nner in the first four rounds of wh at is sha ping up to be one of the .most competitive Grand National Cham pi onshi p chases in recent years. Even so, I w as read y to thro win the towel after the Ha rri ngto n Half Mile. I had conv in ced m yse lf th a t it wa s n ' t 'w orking, and there wa s no real reason to keep going. I just wasn 't going to get to know these rid ers well enough to do the job that I w ant ed to do, regardl ess of how the y act ed or felt aro und me. I was never going to move forward in line. But so metimes you can get lucky and · find th e right pe ople who will let you take a cut or two in that line, and it can make all the difference. Tha t ha ppened to me at the Springfield Mile. As I headed ou t th e off ice d oor for Springfield , I as ke d Cy cle News' d irt tra ck -turned-m ot ocr os s ed itor Don n Maeda his predictions on the outcome. "Will Davis," Maeda offered. "No way man," I said. "Chris Ca rr." " D u de," M a ed a le ctured , " C arr wo n 't win. He never wins that race." I listened t h ough tf u lly a s th e o ld ma ster explai ned why, and then offered my opinon again. . "Chris Carr." My re as on for believing tha t Carr wo uld win Spring field was the sam e as Maeda:'Chris Carr never wins Springfield. Just like Springer never won an ymor e, though we both wanted to s ee that ha ppen aga in, and we did . Simpl y pu t, Carr won Springfield just like I knew he would. I su ppose it can be so me consolation to Maeda that Davi s was right there and appeared to ha ve just as go od a shot at winning until his mot or ate itself. But rega rdl ess of the ci rcu m stan ces th at d ay , I kn ew that Ca rr would win, an d win he did. But while seeing my prediction come true certainly mad e my job of filing the sto ry easier, it didn't change my attittude. Chris Carr did . It all sta rted innoce ntly enough as I was pulling m y rent- a-d ent into th e parking lot of my hotel at around 7 p.m. I had planned to file my sto ry and hit the hay early so that getting up for my 8:10 a.m. flight to Chicago w ould be a cruise . Out of n owhere ca me Ca rr' s lovely companio n, Pam Brook s, struggling unsuccessfull y to keep hold of severa l sacks of what appea red to be "party favors" from the local min i mart. "W here are yo u goi ng w it h all that stuff?" I said . . "Room 212, and you' re invited." . One half hour later I kn ocked on the . door of 212, and Carr himself answered th e d oo r. It seemed th at. th e troo ps, inclu ding Carr an d Broo ks, The McCoy family fro m Texas, an d Cha d Barth, a former Carr wrench , had elected to stay in town an extra night, and they were on their way ou t to d in ner. The y invited me, and I accepted . We head ed to the Cracker Barrell, swappi ng yarns and comparing verba l note s ab ou t w ha t ha d taken place that day. From there it was off to one of the lo cal ta verns fo r a s m all welco mi ng party pu t on by one of Carr' s friends. Ca rr had promi sed to attend if he wo n, and he kept his wo rd . Mo re than a couple hou rs we re spent there as he -signed autograp hs and danced , and talked to guys who rem embered when... He treated everyone the same way, and he never appeared to be too tired or too bored to talk to the next person in line. Wh en w e re turn ed t o the h ot el , Kenny Tolbert met up with us , and we hea ded up to the roo m. mula One fi eld d ominated by two the Yugos lav 250cc road race Grand Prix win, securing the points lead from Rod s tro kes. In Superbike a ction Freddie Gould in th e process. Kel CarSpencer toppe d Eddie Lawson a n d ruthers held a narrow lea d for Dave Aldana after early leader Cool ey most of the race, until his bike' s ran ou t of gas a ha lf mile from the finengine seized as he began the last ish...Graham Noyce was ba ck on form ffl,;, .....,'11 lap. Giacomo Agostini prein ro un d five of the 500cc Wo rld MX dictably wo n the 350 and r~~';t~.~. GP, r id ing to a wi n 500cc cla sses abo ard hi s MV over Andre Malherbe Agu stas. and points lead er Brad Lack ey. 15 YEARS AGO." JUNE 11, 1980 an k Scott racked u p his third Winston Pro Series wi n aft er ou tdis ta ncing Steve Morehead and his brot her Gary Scott in the AMA Grand Nation a l Cha m p io ns hip roun d on the half mile at Lou isville. The eve nt was marred by the unfortunate d eath of David Jon es , ki lled in an accident involvin g a spectator who had entered the track d uring a heat ra ce...In AMA · National roa d racing at Road America, · Wes Cooley put the fo ur-s tro ke Yoshimu ra Suzuki at the front of a For- H 5YEARS AGO... JUNE 6, 1990 h e Roll ing Th u nder Show hi t th e Springfield Mile and Scott Pa rk e r wo n hi s second st ra ight race wi n in a ru nawa y. Steve Morehead and Chris Carr were too busy racin g eac h ot her in their heated battle for second to stay w ith the de fe nd ing G r a nd Nationa l Champion . Carr came ou t on top o f t h e fig ht for seco n d place ...Clinching h is fi rst Natio nal 250cc Mo to cro s s overa ll v i ct ory , T For the sake of this s tory, I'd love to tell you th a t the three hours which foll owed were spent consuming copius amounts of beve ra ge and watching the Springfield cham p celebra te his victory by getting lo oney and acti n g like an id iot . But I never got to see that because it never happened . What I got instead was far better. I got to kn ow Chris Carr . He talked, and I listened. And I talked, and he listened . Th e sub jects ranged from pla y rid ing to racing to whatever. I told him how I had met him after his heart-breaking da y at the 1994 Del Mar Mile when h e w atched a se cond Grand National title slip through his fingers, and how he had sho w n grea t poise in sp ite of it. I told him that I had ad mi red the su perhumaneffort he gave at Pom ona just one week prior, w hen he charged his way up to third place from dea d-l ast and then collapsed next to his van afterward . A n d h e told m e so me th in gs . H e gave his thou ghts on so me of his competitor s, all fairly objective but nonetheless insig htfu l. Wh at it was like to win the Grand Na tional Championship after trying for so lon g only to lose it to the freight train that was Ricky Graham in 1993. He told me abou t that day whe n he was just a rookie on the San Jose Mile and an angry Hank Scott had gra bbed him by the helmet to shake so me sense into him . O r how he felt abo ut Chris Carr being fore ver villified as a whin er for sta teme nts he'd made yea rs ago and ne ver since. O r how even on th e day tha t he'd accom plis hed yet anot her one of his dreams - victory at the Springfield Mil e - it ha d blow n him away to hear so meone yell from the stands jus t before th e races, "Hey Ca rr, yo u' re go nna get killed ou t th er e today." I thi nk it hurt him , but I didn' t ask him that. But I lea rned a lot , and I feel that I es tablished a link wi th Chris Carr that will allow me to talk to him on and off th e track, to know' what to ask him and .w h e n, and to gai n n ot n ec es s a rily friends hip, but u n d er stand in g. That's . why I'm going to han g arou nd dirt track a little lon ger. Ho pefully I' ll be able to d o it with some of the ot her riders as well. I' m sure that I will. Tha nks Pam and Chris . Th e line 's . moving again . l'N Damon Bradshaw led from start to finish in th e se co n d moto at High Point Raceway inMt. Morris, Pennsylvania. Jeff Ward fin ish ed second w ith Jeff Stanton third . Jean-Michel Bayle carne back fro m a poor start in the first moto to w in the 125 cc class over ~~~~:..« Tallon Vohland and Jeff Emig.. . Before a crowd of 75,500 , Wa yne Raine y an d John Kocinsk i t opp e d the 500cc and 250cc classes, res p ect iveIY» in t he It ali a n rou nd of Grand Prix roa d racing a t Mi s - _ ., a no . The rai n- in te rrupted 500cc race finis hed with Kevin Schwantz in secon d a n d Michael Doohan third . Ko ci ns ki bettered th e track record in the quarter-liter class by more than tw o secon ds durin g qualifying and led second-place finisher Helmut Br ad l 14 s eco nds at the fi n is h . Wilco Zeelenberg was third. ( 'N A t3 a ~ 71

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