Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 20 MAY 20, 2014 P107 horseshoe on lap two. Cooley took a wide entry. Neilson, pumped with confidence, made the clas- sic inside pass just before the apex. Giddy from his move, Neilson somehow missed fourth gear on the chute between the horseshoe and the entrance to the West Banking allowing Cooley to take back the lead. It was short lived, however. Neilson made the same pass on Cooley the very next lap and this time he shifted true and began to pull away. At the checkered flag, Neilson won by 28 seconds over David Emde on a Mack Kambayashi Kawasaki. Cooley was a distant third. Legendary tuner Reno Leoni hit the peak of his AMA Superbike success when his riders Mike Baldwin and Kurt Liebmann went one-two on their Leoni-tuned Moto Guzzi Le Mans at Charlotte Mo- tor Speedway a week after Daytona. Interestingly Neilson, having to put together an issue of Cycle, missed Charlotte. Had he raced and scored at least three points he would have been AMA Superbike Champion in '77. Baldwin almost made it two in a row at Loudon in June, but he crashed his Leoni Guzzi just yards from the finish while in a last-lap battle royale with Ron Pierce on a BMW. At Sonoma in July it was Sears Point specialist Paul Ritter doing what he did on his home track and that was beating all the big boys for the sec- ond year in a row on his Dale Newton Ducati 860 Sport. Fate also intervened in the race at Sears. In the heat race, Ritter had just thundered past Cook Neilson, Steve McLaughlin and Reg Pridmore to lead when he suddenly ran off the track on the off-camber turn two. That set his Ducati into a wild tank-slapper that threw him over the bars and bust- ing his windscreen. But luck was with Ritter and he somehow landed back in his saddle and recovered to win the heat and the final the next day. In August at Pocono it was Reg Pridmore's turn as he recovered from a big crash in his heat race the day before to win on the Racecrafters KZ1000, giving Kawasaki its first AMA Superbike Series win. McLaughlin made the debut appearance of the Yoshimura Suzuki GS750 a huge success when he won Laguna Seca's Superbike race in spite of, or perhaps because of slamming the engine case on his Suzuki causing small crack. The thing was leaking just enough to spray closely following Neilson and his Ducati, causing Cook to abandon the chase in the closing laps. The season ended at Riverside with Cooley leading the Superbike finale late only to have the Kayaba shocks blow on his Yoshimura Kawasaki. Cooley's bike was pogoing everywhere on the fi- nal two laps and Neilson was able to pass him, but Cooley, seeking his first Superbike win, was not to be denied. He managed to keep the squir- relly Kawasaki in line just long enough to repass Neilson and take the win. In the end seven different riders won races that year, five different manufacturers won races and nine different guys scored podiums with Neilson leading the way with four podium results, followed by three each by Pridmore, Cooley and Lieb- mann. Baldwin, Pierce and Ritter each scored a pair of podiums and McLaughlin and Dave Emde also stood on the rostrum in easily the most even- ly matched season in the history of the series. That year also marked a turning point for Su- perbike racing. The Japanese multis were get- ting ever better handling. The Suzuki GS750 really marked the beginning of the end for the older tech European Twins. The next year the old- school Twins only scored two wins. In 1979 just one and by 1980, when Honda finally entered the fray upping the ante even more, for the first time all the wins were by Japanese multis. Superbike racing was maturing, becoming more costly and ultimately would supplant For- mula 750 (F1) as the premier road racing class in America. But for one shining season parity reigned and variety was indeed the spice of life in Superbike racing. CN ULTIMATE SUPERBIKE PARITY Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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