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/1470676
eight rounds, Ballington two and Rainey one. Mike Baldwin also won the Laguna Seca race on his visit home from the GP circuit. The one issue Ballington saw racing in America were the tracks. "The safety issue was not at the forefront in the AMA," Balling- ton recalls. "Some of the tracks were a bit hairy. Pocono on an RS500?! Going around the bank- ing at whatever speed we were doing, and the banking wasn't steep, so if you went off you were going to slam that steel barrier pretty hard. I didn't look. I just closed my eyes around there." Ballington said a momentary lapse of concentration cost him a shot at the '86 championship. It was at Mid-Ohio where he was leading when he hit a depression on the inside of the track on the final corner and crashed hard into the haybales. "That cost me a bunch of points," Ballington said. "Randy may have still beaten me for the championship, but I would have still had a good shot at it had I not fallen at Mid-Ohio." When it was all said and done, Ballington scored a podium at every Formula One round that season, except for Mid-Ohio and won two races along the way, adding a season finale victory at Road Atlanta. When the AMA discontinued the F1 class, MacLean had Bal- lington back again in 1987, this time in the highly competitive AMA 250cc Grand Prix Series. Again, Ballington had immediate success, winning the season opener at Daytona over his rival Renfrow. Amazingly, Ballington scored the Daytona 250GP victory despite crashing on the final lap. He thought Renfrow was right on him, but Renfrow's machine ran out of fuel with less than a lap to go. "I went into the chicane too fast trying to get around a lapped rider and spun out and hit the deck," Ballington said. Balling- ton managed to keep his Honda RS250 running during the fall and got quickly back on the track and still won the race by eight seconds over John Kocinski. Ballington and Renfrow would win races that year, but it was Kocinski's coming out party and he dominated the series, winning five of the nine rounds en route to the title. Ballington finished a distant second. "I told people then that John Kocinski had what it took to be World Champion," Ballington said. "And it turned out he did." The other untold story of '87 was that Ballington was prom- ised Michelin GP tires before the season started. "But they never materialized," he said. "So, I was on second-string Michelin tires, and I crashed chasing John sev- eral times because the front tires I was using were junk." Ballington came back and raced in the AMA again in 1988, but by then Kocinski was un- touchable. Ballington got a solid start at Daytona and Road Atlanta and was a close fourth in the points behind Kocinski, Brit Alan Carter and Thomas Stevens. But then a broken wrist at Loudon put him out for most of the season. He came back and had a decent race at Mid-Ohio, but by then closing in on 40 he decided to call it quits after the '88 season. "Thinking back now, I had a wonderful time racing in Ameri- ca," Ballington said. "It was great being a tourist and seeing differ- ent parts of the country. Bubba Shobert and I became good friends and played a lot of golf together. "I'd like to think some of the riders benefited from having me there to race against. Rich Oliver once came up to me and told me he had to step it up and was going seconds a lap fast rac- ing against me. I look back with mostly great memories of the racing and the people I met in America." CN CN III ARCHIVES P130 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives "I didn't look. I just closed my eyes around there." -Kork Ballington