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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE R oad America's turn five has always been one of the most challenging corners in road racing. Riders come off a long straightaway where they reach top speed and then the braking zone for turn five's 90-degree left-hander is a fairly steep downhill. It tests the braking systems of even the best motorcycles and the skills of the riders are pushed to the max. One year the corner nearly got the best of the otherwise flawless Martin Cardenas. He was racing the M4 Suzuki Superbike and simply could not get stopped going into the turn. He took the runoff road just about as many laps as he made the corner and trust me, Cardenas was not alone. The runoff of Road America's turn five is one of the busiest sections of non-racing pavement in all of road racing. Turn five during the 1989 edition of the AMA Road Race event at Road America proved espe- cially rough on riders. That was the year that Yo- shimura Suzuki's Scott Russell and Jamie James collided while running one-two on the last lap of the Superbike race. Privateer Yamaha rider Rich Arnaiz picked up the pieces and his one and only AMA Superbike victory. Almost forgotten in the aftermath of that crash was the equally as crazy turn five melee in the AMA 750 Supersport race. Yoshimura Suzuki's Scott Russell won his second Yokohama 750 Supersport race of the year, riding in pain from a broken collarbone he received at Loudon the week before, but Rus- sell's heroic ride took a back seat to the drama of a frightful fourth-lap crash involving Jamie James of Yoshimura Suzuki and Team Targa Kawasaki rider Doug Chandler. The dramatic accident was caused by a controversial move on the part of Vance & Hines rider Dave Sadowski. The stage was set that weekend for a show- down between the Suzuki camp with both Yo- shimura and Vance & Hines and the Team Targa Kawasaki Race team. Russell had easily won his qualifying heat race over Cam Roos and Mike Harth. Kawasaki's Chandler however, won the second heat in a close one over Sadowski, and Chandler's race time was over three seconds faster than Russell's. The Yoshimura Suzuki camp was especially concerned that Vance & Hines and Kawasaki bikes seemed suddenly faster than theirs. The Yoshimura crew was burning the midnight oil Friday evening, trying to coax a little more speed out of the team's GSX-R750s. The Rob Muzzy-tuned ZX-7 of Chandler's was without a doubt the class of the field. In Chan- dler's heat race, if Chandler would blow a turn, all he had to do was dial on some throttle to stay in front of Sadowski. That is not to say that Chan- dler wasn't riding well, on the contrary. Chandler was riding with more confidence than ever. It seemed that the long time flat-tracker was com- MELEE AT TURN FIVE P100