Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round 13: Pontiac Silverdome TOYOTA TRUCKSITHORIPARTS UNLIMITED AMA U.S. SUPERCROSS SERIES By Henny Ray Abrams Photos by Karl Ockert PONTIAC, MI, APR. 10 he Jeremy McGrath Victory Tour rolled through the Pontiac Silverdome on Saturday night, laying waste not only to the field of 20, but also to the facility that has been unkind to him the past few years. Jumping straight to the front, the Mazda / Cha pa rra I/ Ya maha-backed McGrath was the most consistent rider on a treacherous, technical track, which ru tted up as the nigh t wore on and which caused even the always-consistent McGrath to miss jUmps. "The track's really tough tonight," McGrath said after winning his sixth race in a row bciore a crowd of 62,698 the largest of the season - and all but sealing his sixth AMA supercross title. "It's really hard to jump these jumps 20 laps in a row. 1 jumped them maybe 14 times out of 20. It was tough race. You had to be consistent out there. I was just trying to ride the track, not ride against everyone else." Suzuki's Robbie Reynard was the only rider able to match McGrath's pace, but for only half the race. Reynard stayed with McGrath for tlle first nine laps, almost sticking a wheel on him as the race neared the halfway point. McGrath seemed to sense the heat and turned up the wick, pulling out a threesecond lead within a lap and a half. Reynard would later say it was about then that his arms pumped up, slowing him considerably and eventually making him easy prey for Honda's Ezra Lusk. "1 got some arm pump," Reynard T .~ cr: 8 said after falling to third but carding his first podium finish of the year. "I can do 25 laps in practice. I don't know. I can't do 15 out there strong, so I've got to figure something out." ' Lusk said he was certain he'd get Reynard, which he did on the 13th of 20 laps. "I knew I'd be able to do that," Lusk. s~id. "I honestly thought that Jeremy would fade a little bit more than what he did. I was having some good lap times and putting in some really good laps, (but) I wasn't able to reel him in as much as I wanted to." McGrath's margin of victory was 2.007 seconds, though he slowed at the end. He took the white flag with a 4.5second gap. Reynard was more than 20 seconds behind Lusk. That McGrath was so dominant on this track was almost ou t of character. Last year, he crashed so hard here, he broke the triple clamps on his Randy Lawrence-tuned Yamaha YZ250, and a year earlier he lost the Supercross title to Kawasaki's Jeff Emig in Pontiac. The win, his seventh of the year and th.e 59th of his career, gives McGrath a 57-point cushion over Factory Connection/Jack in the Box/Honda's Mike LaRocco (who was fourth tonight) with three races to go. To clinch his sixth title, McGrath has to score only seven points a 14th-place finish - in any of the last three races. LaRocco started badly and got tangled up in the Uphill turn on the first lap. He ended the first lap in 10th and steadily made his way to third, taking the spot from Honda's Mickael Pichon on the 16th lap. By then he was too far back to make a run at Reynard, and he had to settle for fourth. '1 was really off the lead pace, riding through traffic, and when 1 finally got to fourth 1 was by myself," LaRocco said. "The track was tough to be consistent on, and I saw Jeremy out there and he was being more consistent than me, I could tell. His laps would stay the same, and when I didn't do something, he'd pull away. I knew that was what it was all about." Passing Pichon on the same lap as LaRocco was Suzuki's Larry Ward, who experienced one of the more peculiar problems of the weekend. '1 had poison ivy real bad, and I've been on some medicine and I think it made me pump up," Ward said of the skin rash he contracted while turkey hunting in South Carolina. "For wha tever reason, I pumped up, and I rode the be t T could under the circumstances and managed to get a fifth. I think I could've done better, but the way my arms were, it was all 1 could do to finish." Behind him came a rider on the mend and improving quickly. Yamalla's Jimmy Button throttled the YZ400 fourstroke around the rocky course in only his second race back after an extended injury-induced layoff. His physical condition wasn't a. problem. What troubled him was that the finish jump in Pontiac resembled something he'd like to forget. "I was having'a lot of trouble all weekend, actually," Button said after his sixth-place finish. "There was a jump .out on the track that was really similar to the jump' tha t I got hurt on in Dallas. That had me kind of pretty screwed up Jeremy McGrath (1), on the Mazda! ChaparrallVamaha VZ250, prepares for battle at the Pontiac Supercross. McGrath, here flanked by Mickael Pichon (5), Ricky Carmichael (9) and Tim Ferry (20), went on to win his fifth race in a row. Ferry was again top privateer. the whole night, and I didn't even really put any good laps in in practice. I rode pretty much like crap all through practic~ and rode decent in the heat race." Then, in the main, his clutch overheated, he collided with Honda's Mickael Pichon, ana he made some riding errors. "I should've for sure gotten Larry (Ward) and I should've stayed a little closer to LaRocco as well, but I'm not totally upset with the performance:' Button said. "Hopefully, I'll just keep moving up and make some good progress the rest of the way and go into the outdoors with a full head of steam." Damon Huffman was the first Kawasaki, in sevent11, despite battling the flu. His teammate Ricky Carmichael was 11th. "I kept her up; I just rode around:' Huffman said. "I wasn't feeling that great all day. I got the flu from riding in the rain back home. Yesterday (Friday) I rode around, and I would rather be in the hotel, sleeping. Actually, I did better than I thought I would do. 'In practice today I felt horrible." Eighth-placed Mickael Pichon of Team Honda was also suffering physically. For the past two races, he had been battling bronchitis, which left him short-winded.

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