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/1542355
IVES
s
F
2006 Al'4A Supermoto Championship
kick off on April 29 at Califomia Speedway.
Jurgen
Kunzel,
Jeff
\!hrd,
Doug Henry and the
rest will all vie for the championship this
year,
but 27
years
ago Kent Howerton came out on
top in a lield that read
like
a who's who of motorcycle rac-
ing to win the inauSural ABC Wide World of Sports Super-
bikers race at Carlsbad Raceway near San Diego.
An ABC
Spors
producer put
the
question
to
promoter
Gavin Trippe why the best road racers didn't race the top
motocross and dirt-track riders.
lnstead
oftrying to explain
the differences,
Trippe
began to
formulate
the
idea
of
bringingallthe riders together to compete on a track made
of elements
of a.ll three
genres
of racing. After Trippe
accomplished the monumentaltask ofconvincing
the
man-
ufacturers to build oneofl bikes for this special made-for-
television event he had his race in November of 1979.
The field of riders brouSht together for the first ABC
Superbikerc was nothing shon of spectacular. Three
world champs were in the field - 500cc Grand Prix road-
racing champion Kenny Roberts; Hakan Carlqvist, the
250cc World Motocross champ; and World Speedway
Champion Peter Collins. ln
addition, a slew of
the
best
American motorcycle racers further
bolstered
the field.
Road racerc such as Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson
would
go
head to head against some of the top names in
motocross, such as Howerton,
lefl
Ward
and Steve Wise
and in {lat track with riders that included Mike
Kidd,
Steve Eklund, David Aldana and others. About the only
notable
no-shows were
Jay
Springsteen
(home
sick) and
Bob Hannah who was sidelined with a broken leg.
The first
year
of the Superbikers was
especially inter-
esting since it brought together a varied
group
of bikes,
s
"There
were four-stroke Honda
and
Yamaha 500cc short-track bikes, big two-
stroke motocross racers like ours, Triumph
and Norton twins and even the big Harley
V-Twin flat
track racers." remembers Greg
Arnette, Howerton's mechanic and co-
builder of the winning Suzuki Rl'4400.
Howerton said they didn't know ror
sure what kind of tires to use and at flrst
tried knobbies.
"They
weren't too bad,"
he recalls.
"Except
for being a little
squirrelly on the
paYement,"
Eventually Howerton settled on spe-
cially cut Goodyear flat-track tires
(a
l9
inch
on the
front
and
18"
rear), The
Goodyear's
provide
excellent traction
on the
pavement,
in fact
too much for the ultralight-
weight Suzuki frame.
''That
bike had a work motor and had a bunch of alu-
minum and
titanium,"
Arnette recalled.
"But
the frame was
made to be really light for motocrors
and
it
flexed
like
crazy
with the st!'esses
put
on it on the road course section-''
Some of the top names didn't even make
to
the flnal.
Robens crashed his Yamaha
TT500 in
practice
when a
shock bolt broke, injuring his shoulder and ankle in the
process-
Spencer crashed on
pavement
that accidenally
got
wet when track workers
watered the dirt section,
and
Lawson's Kawasaki
seized
in
his heat race.
Another
prerace
favorite was David Aldana, who had
ample e)(perience in motocross, dirt track
and
road rac-
ing. He rode
a
Honda
500cc four-stroke single.
"We
were underpowered," said Aldana, who raced
with knobbies in
the final and finished eighth,
iust
behind
Steve Wise and
just
ahead of Alex
Jorgensen.
"The
two-
stroke motocross bikes
proved
to be a lot faster than
the
four-stroke
singles."
Even with
a slightly de-tuned motor lor a softer
power
delivery Howenon's Suzuki hit I l0 mph on the straight-
away section
of Carlsbad Speedway's Superbikers course.
"Our
bike was
pretty
fast,"
Howerton re