Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Roberts' Greatest Victory ,, 30 Y&\RS A60. . . May et, 1974 P e o ple will come up to me today and say, 'I was at the mile.' That's all they'll say. And I know what they mean. Those are the kinds of things that mean more to me than winning the American Championship or the World Championship." So said Cycle News Rider of the Century Kenny Roberts when asked about his victory at the Indy Mile on August 23, 1975, a legendary performance born out of desperation. Roberts was desperate to win a third consecutive AMA Grand Na tional Championship. Despite victories at the Houston TT and Dallas Short Track, he was involved in a co lossal struggle with his old Junior-class rival, Gary Scott, who had proved to be incredibly consistent aboard his factory Harley-Davidson X R7S0. Scott Our cover cap- wasn't Robe rts ' on ly prob lem , though . r_~=::~;;~; Robe rts ' own factory Yamaha ve rtica l twi n dirt-t ra cke rs were proving to be a big han dicap against the well-developed V-twin Harleys. Equal in power with the XRs, Roberts' XS750-based machi nes lacked tractability, and that hurt his results. What he lost on the dirt he was able to make up with a superior road racing program to keep him in the title hunt. So it was that Roberts' road race win at Laguna Seca in early August kept him close to Scott as the series rolled toward the Indy Mile at the end of the month. Knowing that he needed a win to keep his title hopes alive, Roberts and team manager Kel Carruthers showed up at Indy named Cycle News Rider of the Century, with one of the most radical vehicles ever Roberts described the Indy main event: devised for motorcycle racing, a Yamaha " I got off the line last because I was on TZ700 road race engine mounted in a the last row, and I just remember trying to Champion dirt track frame . Neither knew find traction... I remember going farther it at the time, but the bike was destined to and farther out to where the hay bales become a dirt track icon , even if it wasn't were, and the pipes were actually collectthe only one out there. ing some hay and wire from the bales . I just "Basica lly, Doug Schwerma had built had it that far in the cushion that it would five chassis for them [TZ engines]," step over once in a while ... Going into the Carruthers recalls . "We got one, Steve corners, there was no way to stop it...To Baker got one, Skip Aksland got one. I'm be able to put together all those laps and not sure who else got one, but it wasn't not crash; every corner was d ifferent . O ne just us. So we went ahead and built the time I could find t raction, shift it and get it t hing. Ours was nice . It was my roa d race go ing down the straight, an d I'd gain a secteam that built it." ond. The next lap, it'd be fishtailing down As a footnote , and to once again settle a the straight and I couldn't get it hooked up, debate that never seems to go away, the and I'd lose a second." Roberts machine was indeed a TZ700 - not Give and take, lose then gain, Roberts a TZ750, regardless of the displacement and the TZ700 charged through the field that any of the other machines like it may until he was within sight of the leaders, have been. Keener and Springsteen, who were "It was a 700," Carruthers confirms. engaged in a playful drafting battle as the "That was all that we had at the time." laps clicked off. With five laps to go, As Carruthers recalls, practice at Indy Springsteen looked back and caught sight didn't go so well , nor did Roberts' heat race. of Roberts. "We were battling to find traction," "I looked back and seen him, and then I Carruthers says. " He didn 't transfer out o f motioned to Corky that number one was his heat race, but that was probably a good coming," Springsteen remembers. thing because it gave us a semi to play with Roberts and the screaming TZ closed it. We changed the gearing, and he just the gap, and with one lap to go, he pulled rode the wheels o ff of it after that." right up on Keener and Springsteen. In his feature interview after being 106 MAY 19,2004 • CYCLE NEWS tured a scene from the BIad< Hills Na tional Enduro and told of the ultratrick 1974 mo toa ass GP bikes that were inside. Ph0tos and detailsof the works machineswere indxled but not r.mited to John Banks'Ossa, HarryEverts' sixspeed Puch,Guennady Moisseev's KfM, Jim Pomeroy's BuItaco, Hans Maisch's Maico and Joel Robert's Suzuki... We also tested the Noguch i 250 yz Monocross, whichwas effectively a Yamaha YlliOB... Our The tatest Poop section gave word that the AMA had reduced the number of units required for homologation in pro racingto 25. The item went on to state, "Thismoved Kawasaki to amounce that they will havea four-stroke dirt-tracker available this season, and HarleyDavidson plans to premier their V--4 700cc four-stroke at Daytona." Now, what do you suppose ever happened to those? Robe rts still had a lot of gro und to ma ke up as he gunne d it off the final corne r. If the brutal TZ spun up t his time , it would be all over. "O n the last lap, for some reason it hooked up and did n't spin ," Roberts remembers. "I couldn't believe that I was passing those guys for the lead ... It had no tire left half of it had chunked out." Springsteen still marvels at Roberts' accomplishment today. "Ke nny never showed his face until the start/finish line," Springsteen says . "Wh e n he went by us, he was going at least 30 mph faster than we were. I'll tell you what, there's only one guy who could have rid den that thing, and Kenny was that guy." Well, maybe two, as Springsteen got a taste of what it must have been like for Roberts when he got the opportunity to ride the ex-Steve Baker TZ in the mid-1990s. "I rode it at Del Mar, and that th ing was ungodly," Springsteen says. "The thi ng's so fast. It's hard to corner, and it doesn't want to stop, so you really have to ste e r it with the rear wheel." As tremendous an accomplishment as was Roberts' Indy win - a win tha t was also part of the only single-season grand slam in AMA history - it wasn't enough. Scott took the title on points, but the Indy Mile is all most people remember about that '75 season . "The re 's a book that could be written just about that one race," Roberts once said. "I take pride in that because I was one of only a few people who could have done that that night . That's what I enjoy. Not that I won a World Championship - there's lots of World Champions." Alas, there's only one Kenny Roberts. 40th Anniversary SCOTT ROU SSEAU ~O YEARS A60... May 23. 19B4 Eddie Lawson (Yam) was the main man on the cover of Issue # 19after scoring the win at the Spanish500cc Grand Prix. As the cover pointed out, the win gave Lawson 42 points to Freddie Spencer's 15 in the championship chase... Scott Parker (H-D) got a gift in the form of a red flag at the Ascot Half Mile and went on to take the win in the race. Ricky Graham (Hon) had builta huge lead in the 20-1apper but it was negated when Garth , Brow crashed. Graham finished second... David Bailey (Hon) went I-I for the win in the 500cc class at the AMNBeI Ray GNCMX Series at Six Flags in Georgia. Ron Lechien (Yam) won the 250cc class. Johnny O'Mara (Hon) won the 125cc class... An '02 Hu sqvama 420 AXe was for sale in the Want Ads section. Asking price for the bike, which supposedly had been ridden less than 10 hours, was $1500. 10 YEARS A60. •• May te. 1994 Mike Kiedrows· ki wasn't caving in yet, as the Kawasaki factory star won the SeattleSupercross to land himself on the cover of Issue # 19. On a night when Jeremy McGrath could have sewn up the AMA Supercross title, Kiedrowski took advanrnge of a McGrath flattire to win his second supercross of the season... Carl Fogarty (Due) and defendingWorld Superbike Champion Scott Russell (Kaw) each took a win at the open inground of the World ChampionshipSuperbike series at Donington Park in England... Ty Davis (Kaw) ended the win streak of his teammate Dan ny Hamel, with a win at the Wells-toWendover round of the AMA National Hare & Hound Championship Series... Stefan Everts (Kaw) won the Austrian 250cc MXGP via 3-1 scores. Donny Schmit (Yam) won the firstmoto .

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