Cycle News

(Above) Randy Goss (6) finished eighth in the final. got in through the Last Chance Qualifier. (Below) Ronnie Jones finished fifth. Shobert lofts his trophy and grins as Chandler holds up his bottle of champagne in the winners' circle at Ascot Park. making up time, closing the gap, vis- ibly gain ing ground into the first turn, making up more. time a t the entra nce to the infield,moving up in th e in field esses before the jump. But Jorgen sen seemed to get i t back and- more exi ting the inf ield, around the last half mi le track turn before the fin ish line. Shobert almost got around Jorgen sen coming out of the in field one lap; the next lap he got sideways in the last infield rig ht -ha nder, and Jorgensen was go ne. Jorge nsen won. Poovey had started the heat in third, beh in d Shobert and J orgensen , ahead of Scott Pearson, who in turn was ahea d of a tight battle between Gary Sco tt , Ross Klatt and Chad Feli cio. But Poovey's bike quit , and he sai led in to the pits, unsure what was wrong. Pearson fin ished third, with Scott fourth. Green led th e second heat ahea d of Hames and Fili ce, who cras hed;whi le Filice go t going again Ted Boody ran third and tried to hold off Ronnie Jones. Boody and Jones went at it and ran nose-to-tail lap-after -la p, but Jones fin ally got past Bood y and stayed in third. Meanwhile, Hames passed Green and opened up a sma ll - but-secure lead. . T he action was behind, Filice moving up, grabbing a position here, making a pass there , fina lly locking into a battlewi th motocrosserWarren Reid - on a White Brothers Yamaha - for fifth. The pair went back-and- forth until Fil ice ran it underneath Reid in the last half mile track turn- which Reid had earlier described as hi s wea k point on the track-and got a far-super ior dr ive off the corner to take and hold fifth place. Reid finished the racewith his bike drench ed in oil and down on power - th e cam tensio ner fell out in the clos ing laps. T he heat was red-flagged and de- cl ared over when Do n Howard crashed. Chris Carr blasted hi s 660ccWood- Rotax into the lead of th e third heat, ahead of Chandler, King, T im Mer- tens, Day and Goss. By the third lap Ca rr and Cha ndler had p ulled away from Day, who was alo ne in thi rd - King, Goss, Mertens and Mike Hal e were mixing it up in a pass-and- repass fight for fourth. On the fourt h lap Cha ndler ran i t underneat h Carr on the last half mile track turn but was clearl y and convincingly out- accele rated and repa ssed o n th e . stra ight by Carr and the 660. But th e battl e ended when Carr 's bike threw its cha in approaching th e jump , Carr pulled into th e pits. Chandler was alo ne , way out front now; Carr rejoined th e race a lap down. Day fin ish ed second, ahead of Hale, Goss and King. Fay led off the start of the fourth heat, pursued by Frank Word and Eklund. It didn't take Eklund even one lap to pass Word for seco nd place, and Eklund quickl y blew past Fay on the stra ight, demonstrat in g th e 660's horsepower. Fay repassed in the infield, but Eklund went back underneath in the last righ t-han der and was out in fro nt for good. At the finish it was Eklund, Fay, Parker, Sam Sweet and Sal Hoffman; Word finish ed eighth, behind Jeff Camp- bell and Charlie Orr. Semis T he first semi turned out to be one of th e night's best races, with Gary Scott jumping off th e lin e first, ahea d of Bood y. T he race quick ly shaped up into Scott leading Feli cio, Boody, Poovey; Filice and Reid , wi th Scott sligh tly ahead and th e others in one jumbled string. Fel icio passed Poo- vey and it was Scott-Felicio-Poovey- Boody-Filice-Reid. Then Poovey got by Feli cio, broke free of th e others and went after Scott. Filice drove underneath Boody heading for the jump. Just as Poovey slid by Scott and Filicemoved ahead of the pack , Boody fell going onto the last halfmile track turn and Reid ran into th e hay bales trying to avoid him. Poovey pulled away from Scott as Filice caught him, and th e dramatic finish was staged: exiting the last turn Filice tri ed to dr ive hard undernea th Scott and wasn 't q uite by when the two col- lid ed, bounced apart, coll ided again. Filice's handlebar caught on Sco tt 's bike and Fil ice went down on the main stra ig ht, in front of the grand- stands. Scott finished second, ahead of Felicio; Filice's tuner im mediately ran over to Scott's pi ts and tried to pick a fight, shouting obscenities and calling Scott a punk. Amazed on- lookers watched as Scott handled the sit uation calm ly and rationally, tell- ing the irate intruder to get ou t of his pits bu t seeming unshaken and un- pertu rbed when th e, irrat ional mechanic left. "I was all the way out on the edge of the cushion when he took a run at me," Scott to ld a nearby reporter. "T he re was no place for me to go and if I had backed off he would have taken out my front wheel. It was just racing, one of those things. When I hear Jimmy complain-other th an being hot because he lost-then I'll worry.As far as that guy (the mechan- ic) goes, if it was my bike, I'd be mad, too." Fili ce, unhurt in the a-ash,described the incident in much the same terms as Scott did. " It was just racing," he said. " I thought I could get under- neath him because he really wasn 't connecting with the drive - but I couldn't and hooked my handlebars ." T he incident ended wi th Fil ice shaking Scott 's hand and shrugging it off; the AMA referee reached the same co ncl usion as Sco tt and Fil ice when he had talked to both. T he second semi lacked the first's drama, being simply straigh tforwa rd raci ng between Carr and Kin g. King led from the start, ahead of Campbell and Carr, and again Carr used the power of the 660 to come from the second row, work past Campbell , then ca tch and pass King. Sweet and 7

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