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/1335637
VOLUME 58 ISSUE 5 FEBRUARY 2, 2021 P95 from which to build a competitive machine than was the Kawasaki Z-I. "Pops is one of the few people that you could actually say was a real tuner," Cooley says. "He could make the factory shit go faster than the factory could. Kawasaki provided him with stuff, but when he went to Suzuki, they provided him with everything and anything he wanted. He took his knowledge and put it together, and the bikes just kept getting better and better." Cooley responded aboard the better-handling Suzuki by winning two Nationals in 78, and he im- proved one spot in the series stand- ings, landing fifth at season's end. More than that, however, Cool- ey cemented his status among all the Japanese factories when he and fellow American Mike Bald- win teamed up to win the very first Suzuka 8-Hour endurance in Japan. Cooley would win the race again in 1980 with that year's Day- tona Superbike winner, Graeme Crosby of New Zealand. "If I could look back at points that changed my career, that [Su- zuka 78] was a big one," Cooley says. "All of a sudden, interna- tional people started noticing me. Even today, I can't believe that Suzuki recently did that Wes Cool- ey Replica [Japan-only model]. I'm still a popular name in Japan because of Suzuka." Although he failed to win a race, Cooley still ascended to the 1979 AMA Superbike Championship via consistent top-three finishes, landing his first career AMA title "Winning is everything, and any time you win, it is a good thing," Cooley said. "We didn't win a race that year, but we earned enough points to win the championship, and that was the focus. I wanted to win every race I ever entered, but in the end, I did win that champi- onship, and that was what Pops wanted. That was primary." That first title was the prelude to a three-rider battle among young lions Cooley on Suzuki, Freddie Spencer on Honda, and Eddie Lawson on Kawasaki for the 1980 championship, a season that ranks as one of the toughest the class has ever seen. After Crosby's Daytona victory, Lawson struck first among the title contenders, winning round two at Talladega. Cooley won next, land- ing the Charlotte race, but then Spencer won the next two events, at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, and at Loudon, New Hampshire. Then it was Lawson's turn again at Atlanta, followed by a Spencer win at Laguna Seca and then another win by Lawson at Pocono, Pennsylvania. Cooley had managed to stay in the hunt to this point, but with two rounds to go, his back was clearly against the ropes. He had been in the right place at the right time in 1979, but with the title defense on the line, he now needed to make 1980 his place and his time. Noth- ing less than two wins in the last two rounds could guarantee a repeat ti- tle. Cooley gave himself a chance by beating series points leader Lawson and Mike Baldwin at Road Atlanta, but Lawson still had a 17-point lead on Cooley coming into the final race of the year at Daytona, and Spencer was far from out of the picture. "You never say die, but that seemed like an impossible thing," Cooley says. "Lawson basically had to not finish." That's exactly what happened. His bike trailing oil early in the race, Lawson crashed in the chicane on lap six. Cooley went on to beat Spencer to the line to take the win. Despite protests by both Kawasaki, which claimed that Cooley was using an illegal frame, and Honda, which claimed that Su- zuki was using an over-sized engine (Kawasaki's protest was denied and Honda's was never allowed to be heard), Cooley prevailed and retained the championship. "If I did win, all I had was a chance," Cooley says. "There are no guarantees in this deal." Cooley went on to remain competitive through 1985, when a horrific crash at Sears Point nearly cost him his life. A year after recovering, he returned to racing, riding endurance events. He formally retired in 1992. Cooley was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2004. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from issue #25, June 29, 2005. CN has hundreds of past Archives edi- tions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives