Bailey Charges To Supercross Win
BAILEY CHARGES TO SUPERCROSS WIN
The old adage "You can't tell the players without a scorecard," no longer applies to American motocross. This year the players are the same but the scorecards keep changing.
The situation came about when two supercross promoters, Stadium Motorsports and Pace, decided to split from the AMA and form their own supercross series. The result is that InSport. as the new organization is called, has its own 13-race supercross series. The AMA has its supercross races too, three of them, called the Triple Crown. Although there won't be an official AMA supercross champion, points earned in the three races will be combined points from the AMA’s outdoor motocross races and at the end of the year a Grand National Champion will be named. Then there are the usual national championships in the 125, 250 and 500cc classes.
If it all sounds a bit confusing, that’s because it is.
As the first of the AMA superclasses, the Daytona Beach race was billed, predictably, as “the first jewel in the supercross Triple Crown," and all the able-bodied factory racers were in attendance.
The nice thing about racing is that as soon as the starting gate drops all the politics and hype are overshadowed by more important happenings out on the track.
The Daytona heat races w'ent pretty much according to the script. That is, the factory guys did what they're paid to do and swept up most of the top positions and, along with them, direct transfers to the final. The wins were nicely distributed according to make, with Team Honda’s Bob Hannah and Johnny O'Mara, Yamaha’s Broc Glover and Kawasaki's JefT Ward each winning a heat. Suzuki was represented by Mark Barnett, who finished behind O'Mara in their heat race, and by Scott Burnworth, who put in a crowd-stirring last-to-first
performance in the last chance qualifying heat.
At the start of the final it w'as Hannah at the head of the 40-rider pack and pulling away to a two-sec. lead. Hannah, once the angry young man of American motocross, is now 27 years old, a bit mellower, but still jet-fast. Sometimes too fast. On lap three he overshot a berm and snagged his front brake lever in a fence bordering the course. The sudden application of the brake slammed Hannah to the ground and allowed David Bailey, trailing in second, to take over
the lead. Hannah remounted but later dropped out of the race and was taken to the hospital for stitches in his right arm.
From that point on Bailey, last year's AMA Supercross Champion, 250cc National Champion and Grand National Champion, cruised home for the win. Combined with his 500cc win at the outdoor motocross opener the previous week, the Daytona victory gave Bailey an early jump in the GNC point standings.
Following Bailey for most of the race was last year’s 125cc National Champion Johnny O’Mara. On the last lap though, he was zapped by Team Yamaha’s Rick Johnson. As the two headed for the finish-line jump, O'Mara took the outside line and kept the throttle pegged. In a photo-finish that had O'Mara flying up and over Johnson and almost into orbit, it was deemed that Johnson had crossed the line first to nail down second place. O’Mara got third, Jeff Ward was fourth and Mark Barnett was fifth.
