Cycle News

••..• • • t IiII • - e C(') - f' O'l CX) ~ s.. CIJ Q CIJ u CIJ The 80cc Junio" get away. Rich Varner on a Chapparal won it; Duane Marker 14xl was second. Bobby Quintin 161 was third. both on Hondas. Arizona Nat'l Mini-Cycle Championships By E.C. Birt & Joni Hopkins PHOENIX, ARIZ., NOV. 24 Just outside of Buckeye, Arizona, you hang a right and ·follow the road up to the edge of the high hand desert, at the foot of the mountains is Arizona Desert Race- way. Friday the desert air was filled with the high pitch of 60cc to 100cc bikes being tuned for two days of racing. A quick hot lap around the pits revealed bikes here from as far as, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Dlinois, and Washington. This year's Mini-Cycle National is being put on by Arizona National Mini Riders Association's Bob Cuendet. He .started it because his first thought was that the kids had no way to start racing, so Bob took the time from his business to get things going. Bob feels that the time he has spent has been well worth the..."trouble because he is giving the kids something worthwhile to do. Friday night the daddies are drinking beer and talking about how fast their son's bike is. The sons are yelling at Mom to fix supper so they can go to bed with the visions of tomorrow's race and the go)d they will get. The 60cc Novice class was the first event to start on Saturday. Yamahas dominated this displacement class. Bryan Miner jumped in to the lead. It didn't take long for Bryan to stretch his lead, leaving a hot battle for second posi tion between Greg Conradson (Yam) and Jeff Yarborough (Yam). As the two riders diced it out Bryan gave a show of real riding ability. The other two motos seemed to be a repetition of the first. Bryan Miner dominated first position with three straight wins. Greg Conradson snatched second position and Jeff Yarborough took a well earned third. The 60cc Junior class was next. Scott 18 Redell (Yam) was fir,.t off the start and into the comer, Tom Hopkins (Yam) worked his way up from a last position start up to second place with Steve Yarborough (Yam) in third. Hopkins was right behind Redell waiting for Scott to make a mistake, but Scott held onto his lead and Tom stayed in second consistently until the final moto when he ran out of gas. Meanwhile, Yarborough had worked up just enough points to snatch that second and move Tom to third. The 100 Novice class was taken over by Jeff Tretera on a Steens and really showed the spectators some riding. He snatched the lead away from Chapperal mounted Richie Doyle in the second moto and didn't 'give it back. Richie gave Jeff a work out. Charlie Stotts (Ste) took third. The next class that was run was the very small 100 Juniors, consisting of only two hot shoes, Tom Hopkins and Michael Larson. Normally a class this size would be cancelled, but as the announcer said, everyone of these riders had traveled a long way and they deserved to run no matter how large or small the classes were. And so it was. Tommy Hopkins (Barnt) immediately took the lead and left little or no room for Michael Larson (Ste). But Michael didn't let off, he kept right on that throttle and took a well deserved and worked-for second. Richie Varner on a Chapperal took over first position in the 80 Junior class and didn't give the other boys a chance. Duane Marker (Hon) and Bobby Quintin (Hon) fought it out for second but Duane grabbed it, and Bobby finished righ t behind. The first event on the line Sunday was the 80cc Novice class. Jeff Tretera jumped out into first with competition from Duane Franks, who kept right on his tail the whole time. Both boys were riding Bamt bikes. Benny Hencamer took third. Many of the mini·flye" showed exceptionally good form...

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