Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Cycle News 2003 06 11

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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By 30 YEARS AGO... JUNE 19, 1973 A few World Championship motocross racers jumped across the color cover of Issue #23, and inside the issue sat the Carlsbad 500cc U.S. MX GP preview. Who did we think would win? Roger DeCoster, of course. But we figured the race for Top American would come down to Brad Lackey or Jim Pomeroy, with Lackey getting the edge due to the fact that Pomeroy would be on unfamiliar equipment... DeCoster won the Italian 500cc GP by virtue of sweeping both motos. Lackey finished sixth with a pair of eighths ... Mickey Quade and Howard Utsey (Hus) teamed up to win the bike class at the Baja 500. A Ford Bronco beat them by an hour... There was an ad promoting Sex for your Vans. They were selling those small bubble windows in round, oval, heart, spade or cat-eye shapes. 20 YEARS AGO••. JUNE 22, 1983 We tested the KTM 495 MXC off-road machine and placed it on the cover of Issue #23. Apparently, when KTM introduced the machine in 1982, it claimed it was the fastest production dirt bike ever, but it had a 125cc powerband. For the next year, the powerband was much more usable. It retailed for $2892... "I can't believe I did itl" exclaimed Ron Lechien (Yam) after winning his first supercross and becoming the first 16-year-old to win a supercross since Marty Tripes in 1972. Johnny O'Mara (Hon) and Mark Barnett (SUl) rounded out the top three, while Warren Reid (Yam) made his debut on a factory Yamaha and got fourth. Reid had then ridden factory bikes for all four major manufacturers... Jay Springsteen (H-D) won the Harrington Half-Mile ahead of Scott Parker (H-D) and Ricky Graham (H-D). Chicane HENNY RAY ABRAMS aiD e T he first clue that something was soft tire to take the pole back from see what was obvious to anyone hinky came when the AMA tim- teammate Aaron Yates, who'd just watching the monitors? ing and scoring monitor showed that nipped him for the fast time and point Jason Curtis had turned a 4.811-sec- that goes with it? Could he have done solution. Since both Mladin and Yates ond lap around Pikes Peak Interna- it? Does a squirrel have nuts? were on the front row anyhow, they There was, of course, a better Earlier in the day American should have given Yates the pole, but Curtis is a good, young up-and-comer, Honda's Chuck Miller had to face the not the point. That would have been but a 4.811-second lap around a music after three Hondas were found the fair solution. But fairness was tional Raceway. Don't get me wrong: 1.315-mile track averages out to to have illegal parts. Miller admitted never going to be part of this equa- something like 984 mph, and the the mistake straight up, explained tion. time couldn't possibly be accurate how it happened, never obfuscating; The qualifying calamity points to a because I'm pretty sure that a Honda a textbook example of responsibility bigger issue than timing and scoring. CBR-600RR gas tank is only good for from a respected team manager that It goes to respect. How can the riders about 900 miles. the AMA would do well to learn from. have any respect for an organization Actually that wasn't the first clue. Director of competition Merrill that doesn't show them the same Pretty much from the minute the first Vanderslice said, "We're not happy respect? The riders and teams expect bike split the timing beam it was about it," then added, "We'd take the the AMA to be at least as professional clear that something was hinky. Very blame for it if it was us, but it's that as they are, to treat racing with the hinky. AMA hinky. The times didn't equipment, and we intend to get sat- immediately flash up on the screen, isfaction from the company some- and when they did they showed riders same seriousness, to have systems in place that work consistently, not to how." make excuses for its errors, and to try averaging 984 mph. On DOT tires no less. Which brings us to Yoshimura to find equitable solutions to unfore- Getting an AMA official to accept blame is harder to find than a nun Suzuki's Mat Mladin. seen problems. Which is not to say that the riders aren't the beneficiaries who can hit a curve ball. Mladin finished the first qualifying session with a time of 53.780 sec- of the AMA's efforts. It isn't the technical glitch that irritated the riders, it was how the AMA onds, the best time for a Superbike responded. The riders would have all weekend. The time was feasible, The AMA does wonderful things for the riders. Through the diligence understood the technical problems, even though his next-fastest lap was though why it took a day to sort out a second slower. After taking the pro- the times from the back-up system visional pole, he said he hadn't done seemed odd. Instead, it was standard the time, but the AMA, in its infinite of AMA road race manager Ron Barrick and the riders themselves, the issue waffling. benevolence, insisted he had. Right to be done at Infineon Raceway - the television audience continues to when asked for his comments, but he utes left in Saturday's final qualify- they screwed the pooch with the jerry rig at Road Atlanta, and there's work Mladin hadn't heard that response up until there were about seven min- tracks are increasingly safer - though might as well have. "I'm not sur- ing, which was when an AMA official prised," he said of the screw-up. approached Mladin's crew chief Peter "Nothing surprises me anymore. I feel Doyle to say something like, "Oh, by grow, both here and overseas, where it can be seen live in Europe, the race sorry for them [the AMA]." the way, that lap we gave Mat yester- weekend is less cluttered, the purses are rising, though not as fast as they should, and the teams have more of a Mladin has an unfortunate history say in the class structure and their Team Honda's Jeremy McGrath graced the cover of Issue #23 after his record-breaking lOth supercross victory of the season in San Jose. Damon Bradshaw owned the previous record with nine, set a year earlier in 1992. The record he broke was Jean-Michel Bayle's record of eight, set in 1991. Robbie Reynard's 125cc supercross debut started well, with a second-place heat-race performance, but ended with a broken wrist. Damon Huffman (SUl) won the 125cc main... Kevin Atherton (H-D) won the Parkersburg Half-Mile ahead of Ricky Graham (Hon) and Scott Parker (H-D) ... Carl Fogarty (Due) won both legs of the World Superbike round in Spain, while Scott Russell (Kaw) took second in the second leg, which was good enough to steal the points lead away from Giancarlo Falappa (Due), who DNF'd both legs... Jan Hrehor (SUl) won the third round of the AMA Nati.onal Reliability Enduro Series in McArthur, Ohio. with the AMA, so conspiracy buffs own future. All goodwill that is might speculate there was more to it. instantly forgotten, not so much when one we had plenty of time to think 10 YEARS AGO••• JUNE 16, 1993 day, the one we put on the top of the qualifying sheets we handed out, the They'd be wrong. The AMA botched they screw up, but when they refuse about and question, you know the the times of a number of riders. Pretty to accept responsibility. UPDATE: In last week's column one; we were just kidding. We're tak- much everybody you talked to had a ing it away. Sorry for biffin' it. Stuff horror story about the way the AMA about a senior Suzuki staffer ques- happens. Have a nice day." bungled timing and scoring. Yama- tioning the legality of Tommy Hayden's Kawasaki ZX-6R, I wrote, The reason they told Doyle and ha's Damon Buckmaster had a simi- not Mladin is that Mladin was already lar tale to Mladin, though he felt the "There was a time, not that long ago, back at the transporter, secure in the time the AMA took away from him, when Suzuki-supported teams were knowledge that the AMA had validat- which would have put him on the scrutinized more closely than Martha ed a time no one would match. The Supersport pole, was legitimate. Like Stewart and found to be much less championship leader had spent the Mladin, he's in a championship hunt squeaky clean." Comes word at Pikes session on a more important task, Peak International Raceway that the endurance testing dual-compound and needs every point he can get. Late on Saturday the AMA issued tires for the 48-lap slide-a-thon a release saying there were issues Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R600 of Road Atlanta race-winner Ben Spies was around the PPIR bull ring, rather than with timing and scoring. This came found to be illegal. The machine had trying to beat himself. He already had a nonstandard oil pressure relief the pole - the AMA had told him so as a surprise to no one, except, possibly the AMA. Was this a new sys- when it issued Friday's qualifying tem they were using? Apparently not. and fined $2000. What's that about sheets - .so why bother putting on a Did they not have time to test it, to people in glass houses? In an upcoming Issue tJf Cycle News valve. Spies was penalized 20 points eN Southwick MX National Mugello MotoGP Illinois WORCS Wisconsin FUSA Dirt Track Opener cue I e n e _ S • JUNE 11. 2003 115

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