Cycle News

Kawasaki KZ1000. Cooley and Murphy were runners up. The 1978 race ran in rainy conditions. Ritter, riding a Ducati 750, took over the lead on the fourth lap from Chuck Parme on a Z-1. Ritter and his Ducati were perfect in the rain. Despite pitting with water-caused ignition problems, Ritter was back into the lead when his bike retired for good at the 90-minute mark. Hurley Wilvert and partner Dennis David may have well won the race, but the rain stopped and on a drying track Reg Prid- more (who teamed with Code and Pierre Des Roches) came flying past on the Vetter Kawa- saki. Pridmore/Code won by eight seconds in spite of taking a 37-second gas stop with five minutes to go. Kawasaki heralded the win with a full-page ad. However, new Cycle News Editor Charles Morey had not given the race feature coverage and he caught hell for it, highlighted by a scath- ing letter from Art Friedman and Jeff Karr of Cycle Guide magazine. Morey hit back saying he would be "watching for the in-depth, colorful coverage in Cycle Guide when it comes out in a few months." Ontario hit its peak in its final two years. Both the 1979 and 1980 fields were chock-full of factory and support teams and their riders. It now featured a $10,000 purse. Morey, perhaps answering his critics, ran a full preview feature in Cycle News on the 6 Hours. Aldana and Dave Emde won the 1979 edition on a Yoshimura Suzuki GS1000 with a rear tire that was down to the cords at the finish. The race was marked by a spectacular crash in which Bettencourt, riding the factory Kawasaki entry, was drafting the Yoshimura Speed Center Suzuki on the front straight. The Yosh bike suddenly whipped to the side and Bettencourt plowed into the back of a much slower running Yamaha RD400 at full song. The impact snapped the triple clamp of Bettencourt's big Kawi in half. A red flag stopped the race and remarkably neither Bettencourt nor the Yamaha rider were seriously injured. The final Ontario 6 Hours in 1980 unfortunately did not end in storybook fashion. The race was cut short by 20 minutes due to an ugly crash on the front straightaway that resulted in Bill Silver being taken away in a helicopter. Silver, while suffering broken bones, was not as bad as he looked lying sideways 10 feet off the racing line on the front straight, but those at the race did not know that and the race was called. Scoring was backed up to the last full lap before the red flag and it showed the Honda CB750F factory superbike pair of Ron Pierce and Freddie Spen- cer (in his first visit to Ontario), having earned the victory over Team Kawasaki's David Aldana and Eddie Lawson by—get this— one second! Yoshimura Suzuki's Wes Cooley qualified first that year with a track record time of 2:01. Lawson and Spencer also quali- fied under the lap record, setting the stage for the fastest 6 Hours in its history. A poor tire choice would hamper the Suzuki squad, however, so that meant a one- on-one battle was on between Honda and Kawasaki. Spen- cer vs. Lawson and Pierce vs. Aldana—a classic match-up. When it was over, Honda was credited with the win, but Kawasaki protested the results claiming scoring missed one of their laps. It took nearly a week of looking over the scor- ing and pit entry/exit sheets to finally confirm Honda's victory. The AFM, however, was under intense pressure with the Kawa- saki protest and some evidence of the pit entry/exit logs pointed towards a Kawasaki victory—and a backdrop of both Honda and Kawasaki looking over their shoulder. In the end, AFM offi- cials acknowledged that Kawa- saki may have in fact won on the track but lost in the scoring tower by virtue of a Kawasaki's own scorer's mistake. It was somewhat of an in- auspicious ending to what had become one of the most popular road races of its era. Ontario Motor Speedway was closed in 1980 and eventu- ally leveled. Today, hotels and shopping centers occupy the grounds. CN P136 CN III ARCHIVES

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