Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128355
en Jeff Ward climbed out of the seat of his Indycar at the final round of the 2002 Indy Racing League season , he did not know that it would be his last t ime at the controls of one of the nO-plus-mph four wheelers. And he certainly didn't expect that his next racing success would come at the controls of a motorcycle. Yet two years after his last Indycar race, Ward , at 43, is an AMA Champion again. After winning three of the seven races in the 2004 AMA Supermoto Championship Series, including the prestigious Red Bull Supermoto AGo -Go in Las Vegas, Ward earned the 2004 AMA Supermoto Championship . It's funny how things work out , but they always seem to do just that for people like Ward - those with the drive and desire to constantly challenge themselves. He epitomizes motivation - heck, he eats , sleeps and breathes the stuff. It has more than just made him a champion ; it has allowed him to reinvent himself in motor racing. Twice. Ward's first career, his motocross exploits as a facto ry motocrosser, has been well chron icled in Cycle News. His first AMA National Motocross Championship came in 1984, when he won eight of the 10 races that year and then finished on the pod ium in the other two to win the AMA 12Scc National MX title. What followed was an incredibly consistent, championship-winning career. In all, Ward collected seven AMA Championship titles in motocross and supercross, and he will forever rema in in the history books as the only rider in AMA history to win AMA 12Scc, 2S0cc, SOOcc and Supercross titles . He then moved on to success at the traditional pinnacle of American automobile racing, the Indianapolis 500, where he finished third in the race and earned Rookie of the Year honors at the 1997 edition of the race . In six Indianapolis 500 starts, Ward amassed an incredible record of three top -five finishes ('97 ; '99, where he finished second; and 2000), one top- 10 finish and two outside the to p lOin just six starts. Such consistency put Ward at the top of the game in the fourwheeled sport. He drove for teams owned by two former Indianapolis SOO-winning drivers - the legendary AJ. Foyt and 1998 winner Eddie Cheever - then moved on to perennial Indycar racing team Chip Ganassi Racing, where he finished a career-best sixth in the 2002 Indy Racing League series standings. Already with over $2 million in career earnings as an Indycar driver, it seemed a foregone conclusion that he would return to the IRL with a team for 2003. "When the year was over, I was still kind of opt imistic that I would have something for the following year," Ward recalls. "The team I was with, Ganassi Racing, just didn't get the funding for a third car. Target [department stores] came in as a sponsor, and they already had thei r drivers, so when the next year started, I tried to put some deals together. There were a coup le deals out there with teams that weren't at the level that I felt I needed to be, so I didn't do anything. I still was going to try and do Indy [the Indianapolis 500], but then that didn't come together, and I got kind of frustrated ." It would have been easy to call it a day after this second career, but Ward is always on the lookout for a new sporting challenge. This time, however, it came in a form of racing he least expected. "I had no reason to think that I was goingto do anything more in motorcycle racing," Ward says. "It was the furthest thingfrom my mind at the end of the car deal. My kids were racing motorcycles, so I figured I could spend a lot more time helping them out because they traveled so much. So, I just started doing that, and then I started riding more and more ." W