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/680400
VOL. 53 ISSUE 19 MAY 17, 2016 P115 fast. The Butler and Smith BMW was wavering on its support of the superbike series, so Pridmore, bolstered by the Six-Hour ride, made the move to the Racecrafters squad. The '77 edition of the Six-Hour was also notable in that Paul Ritter (who would go on to win the Sears Point AMA Superbike race later that summer) and his racing partner Vance Breese got outstanding gas mileage from their Ducati 750S and went 90 minutes between pit stops (most other teams could only go an hour at a time). Wes Cooley and Tony Murphy won the '77 Six-Hour on a Yoshimura Kawasaki Z-1 over Harry Klinzmann and David Emde on another Z-1. The results were not made official that year until the Monday after the race. The races were scored by the team's supplying individual scorers, watching a clock and their team and marking a time sheet every time their team came around each lap. Problems would crop up if a scorer missed a lap, not hard to do, especially considering Cooley and Murphy ran 153 laps that year. Keeping scoring straight was always a challenge and the '77 race would not be the last time the issue caused complications with the final results. An indication of just how important the AFM Six- Hour had become was pointed out by Paul Ritter in a story he wrote about the race. "In 1978 there were 101 entries and 95 starting teams. The event always drew some top-flight talent. In 1977, for example, the nine riders who comprised the top four finishing teams included no fewer than five AMA Superbike race winners." Daylong rain is rare in Southern California, but that's just what the riders faced in the 1978 AFM Six- Hour. A huge field started the race that year and in the end it was Reg Pridmore, Keith Code and Pierre desRoches winning on the Vetter Kawasaki KZ1000. Pridmore was the hero of the race, chasing down and passing the team of Hurley Wilvert and Dennis David in the closing laps to give Vetter Kawasaki the victory. Notably in the '78 race Billy Addington led the first lap on a turbo-charged Suzuki GS1000! The race really exploded in popularity by 1979. That year it featured a $10,000 purse and even war- ranted a race preview in Cycle News. The very experienced team of Dave Emde and David Aldana scored victory in the 1979 AFM Six- Hour. The pair rode a Yoshimura Suzuki GS1000. That year's race had a potentially catastrophic crash. John Bettencourt had the factory Kawasaki Superbike at full song coming down front straight. Johnny B was drafting behind the Yoshimura Su- zuki and when the Yosh bike moved over to avoid a slower bike, dead ahead for Bettencourt was a Yamaha RD400 going 40 mph slower. The factory Kawasaki smashed into the backend of the little Yamaha and both riders went sliding down the front straight. The crash brought out the red flag, but miraculously neither rider was seriously injured. The 1980 Six-Hour was perhaps the zenith of the event. It pitted Freddie Spencer and Ron Pierce on a factory Honda CB750F-based Super- bike, against Team Kawasaki's David Aldana and Eddie Lawson and the Yoshimura Suzuki of Wes Cooley and Rich Schlachter—basically a full-on team AMA superbike race. The race ended in controversy with Team Honda and Team Kawasaki running neck and neck for the win. Protests were issued and a week after the race Honda's Spencer and Pierce were credited with the win, while it appeared that Lawson and Aldana may have actually won the race on the Ka- wasaki but lost out due to an inexperienced scorer, who missed laps and failed to immediately alert AFM officials. The controversy of the 1980 race and the clo- sure of Ontario Motor Speedway took the air out of the AFM Six-Hour balloon. The race went on for a few more good years at Riverside. Lawson and Pierce avenged Kawasaki's loss by winning the '81 race at Riverside, but after that the factory teams were gone and the race eventually faded. For a time in the late 1970s and into the early '80s the AFM Six-Hour became one of the biggest road races in America, perhaps second in impor- tance to the Daytona 200. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives