Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.·R~~!d-m~~~m 12 on, but we can't run that pace for 25 laps. Tires will be a factor. It's going to take a lot of strategy:' Behind Atherton, Kopp and Schnabel got company in the form of new series tough guy Dale Jenneman and his stoutrunning Frontier Harley-Davidson/H-D Central XR750. The 34-year-old Nebraskan got a breath on the back chute on lap eight and then drafted with. Schnabel and Kopp to the,end, finishing third behind Kopp and relegating the • rookje Wisconsin rider to seek his fortune in the senti. "We've been figh ting, trying to set up this chassis, and it's either right or it's wrong," Jenneman said. "We made some changes, and it just took us three laps or so to get the tire working. 1 still slipped twice coming off four. 1 thought they were gonna eat me up." Morehead backed up earlier statements that his 1996 mile program is indeed a strong one by grabbing the victory in the next 10-lap heat over Team Undo's Brett Landes on the Quaker State/ Audiovox Honda after negating Kenny Coolbeth's holeshot off row two and then trading the lead with the Bartels' H-D-moun ted Springsteen for much of the race. "That was a riot," Springsteen said afterward. "lUke racing like that. We've got a tired horse, but she seems to be running good right now." Once again there were five riders in the lead draft, but the Winchester Harley-Davidson/Eddie Adkins Racingbacked Coolbeth and Lynch Racing/Beale Peterbilt's Paul Lynch never managed to break into the top three as Morehead, Landes and Springsteen gained entry to the final after crossing the line in that order. At 5:59.99, this heat was the slowest of the four. "The track is good for everybody, but the corners are getting slicker," Morehead said. "We gotta hook the chassis up more, because you've got to be able to roll free into the corners without breaking the chassis sideways. If you get sideways, you burn your tire and lose momentum." The champ drastically re-upped the pace in the third heat and grabbed the win after yielding the point position to Camlin - who had to come from the penalty line for allegedly jumping the start - only on laps three, six and eight. "They said 1 jumped - I didn't jump," ionshi Series Rounds 16 and 17: Illinois State Fairgrounds Camlin said. "Starts don't mean much here anyway. Maybe I'll jump in the main even t." Parker found a good line through three and four to keep Camlin at bay while Davis overcame a fourth-place start to snatch the final direct transfer in the heat from Deeley Harley-Davidson's Steve Beattie. Parker was a man of few words after seeing the heat time, a 5:56.65 clocking. "Let's go," the determined Parker said. "Let's line 'em up." Davis claimed to be lucky just to beat Beattie back to the line for third. "The clutch was slipping the whole way," Davis said. "That's actually how I was making time in the corners - 1 wasn't spinning the tire. But when it was time to get going, we couldn't do anything. We put a whole new on in for the main event." King led a Honda 1-2-3 finish in the final heat, towing USC Racing's Kevin Varnes and Corbin Racing's Chance Darling across the line after perhaps running the "smartest" race of the heat winners. USC's Terry Poovey actually grabbed the holeshot on his twingled Harley-Davidson and figured to take the win before a broken shock on lap six sidelined the Texan until the semis. King, meanwhile, made effective use of his superior corner speed to beat a clearly more powerful Varnes to the stripe by inches. "He got me by about half a wheel," the ever-improving Varnes s,!id. "I thought 1 had him because he couldn't draft me on the front straightaway. I rode it in real hard on the last lap, but then 1 almost turned it into the guardrail. 1 had to straighten it up, and that let him catch me." "I wouldn't bet that 1 was the smartest guy," King cracked. ''I'd say the smartest guy is probably sitting in the 10th row of the grandstands. But I'm going to do the same thing in the main event. I'm going to ride around until the last few laps, and then I'm going to do something." SEMIS Poovey reversed his bad luck in his heat race by seizing control of the first semi at the halfway point and then dicing it out with Beattie, McCoy and Canadian rider Scott Buchan on the Castroll Clark Group/Robinson HarleyDavidson entry for the win. Beattie grabbed the second spot to land a thirdrow start in the main event. Spectro / Moroney's Harley-Davidson's Mike Hacker holeshot the second semi but quickly found himself in a four-rider dogfight for two tickets to the main. Schnabel looked strong right from the start, but Hacker often found himself at the tail end of the pack when the quartet of Schnabel and Suburban teammate Jim Sumner, Lance Jones and he passed the start / finish line. Yet the resurgent 20-year-old Virginian was able to hold the gas on longer through three and four on the last corner and grab the runner-up spot behind Schnabel for a spot in the main event. Coolbeth showed an equal amount of fight by surviving a bobble in the third semi to steal the last spot away from Roeder H-D's Geo Roeder II in a photo finish just behind Gardner Racing/Walters Bros. Harley-Davidson's Dan Butler, who led the tight, three-rider pack across the line"1or the win. GRAND NATIONAL Camlin rolled it off into turn one first from his position just right of inside pole-sitter Morehead, but the "Findlay Flyer" dropped to the bottom of the track and led the field off turn four. Atherton was quickly up to second after King grabbed the lead on the second lap as the field continued to sort out. No fewer than 14 riders werorin contention for the win for most of the final. The series points leaders were the men on the move, however, as Atherton led King, Morhead, Parke; and Davis at the front. Then came Carnlin, followed by Kopp, Springsteen, Varnes and Butler. Unfortunately for Morehead, he'was the first to succumb to the frantic pace after his motorcycle began to run on only one cylinder. He remained out on the race track and dropped to 17th place - the last running motorcycle as Hacker already had exited with problems of his own. "I don't know why it did that," Morehead said after the race. "We're trying to find out right now. If 1 could just finish every week then we'd be in the hunt. Our program is really good. We're just not showing it right now." King managed to lead several of the early laps with his hooked-up Honda, but as the race neared the halfway point, TCR teammates and Davis began to Sunday'S Grand National was closer. Camlin (27) came trom behind to split Atherton (23) and Parker (1) In a finish that had to be reviewed by AMA officials to be confirmed. show some of their brawn by consistently remaining in or near the lead. "We never were further back than third," Atherton said. '1 really felt like 1 had something for them." "I was third for a while, and 1 led it for a long time," Davis said. "I was running up on the top edge of the groove, and it was working for a while. 1 was passing guys up there." Parker was still a factor, as were Varnes and Kopp. Camlin actually appeared to lose ground, running fifth, just ahead of Kopp when Parker took the lead on lap 18. . "Skip and I had a little bit of a plan," Camlin said. "We wanted to lay back and save the tire. 1 would only pull up on them when 1 thought 1 was losing ground. When the five-lap sign came up, 1 waited two more laps." . By contra~t, Da vis appeared to have the tiger by the tail - until lap 18. His chances for a victory were ruined when he fell off his high line on the groove and dropped from fourth to 16th. He rebounded to 10th before the end of the race. "I was stupid," Davis said. "I got off the grOOV!! a couple of times. I got too greedy and slipped off into the greasy stuff. 1 lost everything." Parker, too, began to fall by the wayside. He was locked in a four-rider battle with Kopp, King and Schnabel, and he found himseU coming out on the losing end when he overcooked it driving into tum one, slipped and lost ground to those three and Camlin. Parker wound up seventh. In the mea·ntime, Schnabel slipped forward to run fifth across the stripe while dicing with Varnes. "They jumped on me a Ii ttle bit," Parker said: "I lost the rear end and the race was over. Sure we're disappointed, but ~t least we only have to wait another 24 hours to try again." True to his word, Camlin got going two laps after the five-lap sign was flashed, blasting by King on the start of lap 23 to run right behind Kopp, who was still hanging tough near the front and still had as good a shot as anyone to win. Camlin took the white flag in the lead

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