Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

t's a hell of a day of motorcycle racing when a guy who goes undefeated for the entire season takes a back seat to two dramatic championship battles in which the eventual outcomes couldn't have been more improbable. Might be a good thing that the AMA Supermoto Championship finale Red Bull Supermoto A-Go-Go was held in a gambling town after all. After finishing second in race one, and with only one race remaining at the Red Bull Supermoto A-Go-Go on the streets of downtown Reno, Nevada, Troy Lee Designs Honda's Jeff Ward appeared to be well on his way to a second consecutive AMA Supermoto Championship. All the reigning AMA Supermoto Champion had to do was keep it on two wheels and finish within about I0 places of title rival Jurgen Kunzel in the double points-paying final race to claim the title again. Easier said than done. On an incredibly wild, dramatic and controversial day of racing that unfolded before approximately 45,000 rabid racing fans who lined the sidewalks more than four deep and peered from parking garages to catch a bird's-eye view of the technical, 12-tum, one-mile Reno street I circuit, Red Bull KTM's Kunzel hit the longshot payoff, landing his first career AMA Supermoto Championship title after Ward crashed while leading the crucial race two. "This is a big dream for me," Kunzel said. ''I'm happy, really happy. We see today that anything can happen." Ward got loose in the dirt whoop section on lap four of race two, tagged a hay bale and went down. His bike stalled after he picked it back up, and he could not get the machine refired. Ukimately, members of his team arrived on the scene, pushing the bike and thus allowing Ward to bumpstart it and get back under way in last place in the H-rlder field. Ward rode like a madman, passing riders as quickly as he could, but he could only advance to 15th place by the end of the 16-lap race. Kunzel, who finished third in race one, finished second to Graves Motorsports Yamaha's Mark Burkhart, the newly crowned AMA Supermoto Lites Champion who won both Supermoto races at Reno to remain undefeated for the season. Under the double points format, the consistent Kunze!, who won only one race all season, was able to steal the title away from Ward, who had scored fNe race wins, by two points, 259-257. If Ward had fln- 26 0008ER 12,2005 • CYCU NEWS ished 14th, the two men would have tied, and Ward would have retained the championship by virtue of those fIVe wins. "It's unfortunate," Ward said. "The double points thing only hurts the guy leading the points. If I'd had double points at Colorado or anywhere else, I would have been 100 points ahead and not having to worry about it. But at the last race... I know they want an exciting finish, but then they should do it at all the other things, too, and then Carmichael and them wouldn't wrap it up till the last race. Those guys wouldn't like that, and I don't like it." Riding far in advance of all the mayhem, Burkhart, who didn't figure into the championship points in any way as he had not qualified for any Supermoto-cJass events while chasing the Supermoto Lites Championship, simply smoked the field all day. While Ward was faster than Burkhart in the opening qualifying session, Burkhart topped the order in qualifying round two and then backed it up by winning Superpole with a time of I minute, 5.589 seconds. Burkhart dogged Kunzel and Ward off the start of race one, while HMC/ Generations of Sonoma Wines KTM's David Baffeleuf, CHM Exhaust Honda's Cassidy Anderson and Red Bull/Cernic's Suzuki's Travis Pastrana slotted into positions three through six. Burkhart began to really press Ward on lap nine, and he actually pulled alongside the champ in between turns one and two on lap I I. Three laps later, Burkhart pulled off an inside blockpass on Ward in the left-handed dirt berm that led the riders to the face of the overunder jump, taking the lead. The two banged wheels, and Ward nearly fell. "It was kind of dirty," Burkhart said. "I didn't want to take him out, and I would never want to do that. I just kind of blockpassed him. I followed him for 12 laps before that. I had fun racing with him. It was cool," Ward let Burkhart go after that, knowIng that the Yamaha man was not part of the championship scenario anyway. Burkhart would win race one by just over three seconds. Ward finished second "He was all over me, and 1 was conservative," Ward said. "I made a mistake In the dirt, and he got under me enough to where I knew that he was at my back wheel. He came in and pitched the back wheel and touched my front. If I would have drove in there, he would have hit me and I would have went over the bank. I knew it wasn't a big deal, so 1let him go by."

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