Daytona 1989

DAYTONA 1989

RACE WATCH

The way racing should be.

RON LAWSON

FOR A RACE, THE MOST UNFORgivable of all crimes is predictability. Oh, there will always be pre-race favorites, and there will always be the racers who you know just won't win. But if all the fans in the stands and all the riders on the track know exactly how a race will turn out, then they might as well stay home and watch “Gilligan's Island” reruns. The seats would be more comfortable and the food would be better.

At Daytona this year, nothing was predictable. A lot of people would have been happy to tell you who was going to win before each race. But. for the most part, they would have been wrong. Who could have predicted that the 200 would go to John Ashmead when the entire overdog Yoshimura team ran into trouble? Indeed. who could have foreseen that unknown Canadian Steve Aseltine would win the Daytona Dirt-Track Series by one point over 600 National Champion Chris Carr?

There were some races that weren't upsets this year at Daytona. Dale Quarterley was a favorite in the ProTwins GP class, and anybody who didn't think John Kocinski was going to win the 250 GP race would have to have been from the moon. But even in those races, there were enough twists and duels to keep the crowd on edge.

So even though Daytona 1989 w ill look a little odd in the record book, w ith an unknown name here or there, it will be remembered as one of the most exciting weeks in the history of racing. And if you weren't there and you never heard of some of the winners, don’t worry. You can get to know them in the pages that follow.

know them in the'pages that follow.