Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

NHRA Winston National Championship Drag Racing Series: Round 5 D RAGRACE ~ ~ -"" John Myers (left) easliy scored his second win in a row and his 15th career victory, extending his National Drag Racing Series points lead to a comfortable margin. Myers rolls on By Todd Veney ENGLISHTOWN, NJ, JULY 9-12 ppare.ntly, John Myers isn't taking turns anymore with David Sch~ltz and Jim Bernard. Since splitting the first three races of NHRA's lO-race 1992 tour with the only other riders in years to have won a Pro Stock title, Myers has slapped the field around at two straight. Halfway through what is looking more and more like another Championship season, Myers already has equalled his victory total for all of 1991 with a third consecutive victory at the Summernationals, staged at one of drag racing's original supertracks Raceway Park in New Jersey, an hour from Manhattan. This time, Myers didn't have to resort to a desperate holeshot to win the last round, as he did in the 1991 final against Bernard. Teammate George Bryce's Star Racing Suzuki Katana was running so fast that it almost didn't matter when Myers left the starting line, and he knew it. "We had about a tenth of a second on the field, and that hasn't happened since we brought out the first GSXR at Indy in 1989," said Myers, whose A first of 15 career victories came at that event, the U.S. Nationals. "It was a great feeling to be able to play it safe on the (starting-line) lights and still know you're going to win." Myers held back on the Christmas tree all day to avoid a disastrous foul start because it wouldn't have been the first time the cat-quick rider lost a surewin by leaving the line thousanqths of a second before the green when almost any reaction time would have done. In the predictable final, Myers continued to dominate his 1991 nemesis, Schultz, the reigning NHRA , Champion whose loss of a sponsor and full-time affiliation with the powerful Vance & Hines shop has forced him to jum'p from one borrowed bike to another to remain on the tour. (Others line up to loan their equipment to Schultz because when he climbs off Sunday afternoon, it's better than brand-new: It's faster.) Schultz, remarkably competitive on his third different bike in three races - a Suzuki GSXR owned by Rick Ward and Greg Underdahl - did everything a rider who has been outperformed all day by a tenth of a second possibly could do; he left the starting line just 1/167th of a second after the green flashed for a nearperfect .006-second reaction time and a sizeable six-hundredths holeshot head start on Myers. But with 1000 feet of the 1320-foot quarter-mile strip remaining, Myers already had erased Schultz's early lead. He breezed by to win handily, 7.76/ 171 to 7.91/171. Myers' 15-hundredths final-round cushion over Schultz, the number two seed, was only slightly less than the edge he had on him and·the rest of the field in qualifying. No one not named John Myers ran better than 7.86, though 15 of the 16 qualifiers did manage competitive seven-second times. Myers paced the program with a 7.75 and never ran ou t of the 7.7s in eliminations - when no other racer could go faster than 7.87. About the only thing he and Bryce didn't do with their Wax Shop/Snap-On-sponsored Katana was touch their still-standing 7.716 track record from 1991. In the opening round of eliminations, lack Kaczala, the 16th and last qualifier with an 8-flat at 167 mph, was behind Myers by 3/lOths of a second, which amounts to a prehistoric age on the quarter-mile. Myers won, 7.79/170 to 8.07/166. In round two, local New Jersey ~ider Steve Meiterman, the sixth-ranked Pro Stock rider in NHRA last year, was "only" 2/lOths back on Myers, 7.74/ 172 to 7.95/168. The eventual winner's time held for Low E.T. honors of the meet and his 172.28 during time trials was good for top speed. Myers had his semifinal heat with Byron Hines, now in his second race astride a new V&H Yamaha aWOl, all the way because of Hines' close redlight start. Even if Hines, the class' most improved rider this season and fastestrising star, had waited another threethousandths of a second before letting the clutch fly, he still would have lost; Myers drove around his ill-gotten head start anyway to win another laugher, 7.76/171 to 7.97/168. In the final, Schultz accomplished what Hines had set out to do one round earlier, cutting the Christmas tree lights to perfection with a near-perfect .006 reaction time. Of course, it wasn't enough. Myers left_with a 516-point lead in the Winston rankings, the largest edge any rider has enjoyed this season. "Now that we have our momentum going, I don't think the lead will change again this year," said Myers, who already was in first coming into the race. "We have some tricks for the next race (the inaugural Mile-High Nationals in Denver, Colorado) that no one else knows about. For the rest of the year, I think we're only going to stretch the lead." CN Results NHll WINSTON SERIES POINT STANDINGS: I. John Myers (4804); 2. Dave Schu1u (4288); 3. John Mafaro (3390); 4. Byron Hines (2842); 5. Jim Bernard (2752); 6. Kerry Larkin (2180); 7. Steve Meiterman (2176); 8. Steve Johnson (2140); 9. Norm DeVine (1968); 10. Ron Ayers (1966). 21

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