Wise Wins Superbikers Competition

WISE WINS SUPERBIKERS COMPETITION

Team Honda’s Steve Wise won the staged-for-television Superbikers competition for the second straight year, beating Honda’s Graham Noyce and Kawasaki’s Eddie Lawson.

In theory the race pits top riders from

all aspects of racing on equal terms. In practice, it’s never worked out quite like that. The motocross portion of the course isn’t rough enough, the flat track portion isn’t smooth enough and the pavement section isn’t long enough to let the bikeso reach real road racing speeds. Instead the best machines have evolved themselves, mostly as open class motocross bikes with disc brakes and lowered suspension or TT bikes with raised suspension.

Another shake-out factor has been the failure of ABC television—which pays the piper and gets to call the tune—to mention brand names, leading to disinterest by factories. Nor does a contracted rider without a good factory bike stand to gain much. There was a full Honda team, a nearly-as-full Kawasaki team, no official Yamahas, Suzukis or Harleys. Missing were Kenny Roberts, newly-crowned world champ Marco Luccinelli and just-injured Freddy Spencer. New AMA champ Mike Kidd had a private Yamaha, sporting Team Maico provided machines for world speedway king Bruce Penhall, top American privateer Richard Schlachter and a bunch of good guys out of their element, as in former world sidecar champion Jock Taylor.

The Hondas had the legs on everybody else and Wise edged world contender Graham Noyce, just as last year Wise narrowly beat Andre Malherbe. Lawson didn’t quite have the power and he’d been suffering from flu, so when halfway through the final he quit tucking in on the straight, you knew the results were settled.

The best show, excepting maybe Penhall and Schlachter and Taylor learning lots of new things about motorcycles, was the lone TT rider, Ricky Graham, on the lone TT bike, an immaculate four-stroke Can-Am build by tuner Ron Woods. He charged harder, banked more steeply, hung the rear wheel out further and threw more dirt than anybody else, but a locked rear brake killed the motor late in his heat race and he didn’t make the final. We can only hope the TV crew spotted showmanship and Graham’s ride will be in the finished program. When and where? Not announced yet; check local listings for time and station.

For a second happy ending, shortly after winning The Superbikers, Wise Was dropped from the Honda motocross team. And was promptly signed on by . . . the Honda Superbike team.