VOLUME ISSUE FEBRUARY , P121
had yet to reach their 20th birth-
days at the time of the Houston
race. At age 24, Jim Weinert was
considered a graybeard in the dirt.
"The Jammer," it seemed, had
been around forever, but as In-
diana Jones told Marion Raven-
wood "It's not the years, honey.
It's the mileage." By 1976, he had
already won two AMA 500cc
National Championships, a
Trans-AMA victory, and had four
factory rides—with two teams.
Weinert went from Yamaha to
Kawasaki, where he won his first
title, then back to Yamaha, where
he successfully defended it, only
to lose his job through no fault
of his own.
Many years after his career
ended, Weinert was finally able
to tell the story. "Bill Buchka, who
was my mechanic at Yamaha,
wanted to go to Europe in 1976.
At the end of '75, he told them
that they were going to send us
there or we weren't re-signing."
"I didn't even want to go to Eu
-
rope," Weinert says, in a worked-
up, New Yorker's voice of defi-
ance. "I didn't even know about
this. So, when I finally talked to
Yamaha, they said they were
moving on. They said, 'Maybe we
can give you a production bike
for 1976.'"
Decades had passed since
that encounter, but the anima-
tion in Weinert's voice brings it
back around, and the words still
sting. His response to Yamaha's
somewhat disingenuous offer
was "No thank you." Or some-
thing like that.
Weinert had already gone from
yellow to green once before, and
he found the doors
were open for him
one more time at
Kawasaki. Could the
old man of moto
-
cross, switching rides
for the third time in
four years, fend off
the pretenders to the
throne at Houston?
The answer would
come quickly: nega
-
tive. Though he had
briefly circulated in fourth place,
Weinert and his Kawasaki had
faded to seventh by the end of
the first moto. Suzuki rider Tony
DiStefano had taken the win,
with Husky rider Kent Howerton
in second, and it appeared as if
one of these two would stand
atop the victory podium, along
with Can-Am rider Jimmy Ellis,
who also showed winning speed.
What do you get for seventh
place? Maybe a Kewpie doll?
But when the gate fell for
Friday night's second moto,
there was Weinert's number-four
Kawasaki battling for the lead.
DiStefano, the 250cc champion
and Smith, number one on the
125s, spent the next 20 min
-
utes looking for a way around
the 500cc king, to no avail, and
Weinert took the win.
He would pick up where he
left off when the racing returned
on Saturday night, leading the
first moto from start to finish for
an easy victory over Ellis. The
overall, however, was still Tony
DiStefano's to lose. Which is
exactly what he did.
"Tony D thought he jumped the
gate," CN wrote, "[and] slowed
for a restart." But no restart was
called, and the Suzuki rider would
then proceed to crash three times
during a frenzied ride to get back
to the front, eventually finish
-
ing 14th. He would get it back
together for a win in the final
moto, with Weinert playing it safe
for second. The Jammer's 7-1-1-2
topped DiStefano's 1-2-14-1.
Weinert would go on to cap-
ture the 1976 Supercross Cham-
pionship and win many more
races before calling it a career in
1980 at the wizened age of 28.
Today, he operates the Jimmy
Weinert Motocross Training
Facility in Jones County, North
Carolina. New riders are learning
how to jam—from the original
Jammer himself!
CN
Subscribe to more than 60 years of Cycle News Archives issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives
Weinert, considered
the "old guy," beat
the rising stars in
Houston and went on
to win the Supercross
Championship.
