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RACE WATCH
GP here and gone again
Planning on going to this year’s USGP at Road America? Don’t. The U.S. has no grand prix this year. Race promoter Dorna and Road America in early March requested cancellation of the 1995 running of the U.S. Grand Prix, scheduled for August 20 at the Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, track. The FIM, motorcycle racing's primary sanctioning body, promptly fulfilled that request.
The race’s cancellation is the result of an apparent misunderstanding between Road America and its advisers and the FIM on how to provide track runoff for a chicane at a high-speed portion of the track called The Kink.
According to track spokesman Roger Jaynes and Dorna Vice President of GP Promotions Dennis Noyes, representatives from the FIM and from Dorna, along with Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Rainey and Kenny Roberts, looked the track over and suggested installation of three chicanes designed to slow the bikes down. Dorna, which was leasing the high-speed Midwest track for the GP weekend, agreed to pay for the requested changes, which were accomplished except for final paving.
Then, says Jaynes, on February 22nd track officials received a letter from the FIM containing final, and different, specifications for the chicane, which already had been built.
Based on preliminary understandings with the FIM and rider representatives, Noyes said, the chicane was built going rider-left. Final FIM specs called for it to go rider-right, providing more runoff room than the riderleft chicane does.
Jaynes said that rebuilding the chicane at The Kink to meet FIM specs “would have entailed moving the better part of a 30-foot mountain, and the cost would have been an additional half-million dollars,” an amount that would have put the event far over Dorna’s budget. Jaynes added, “They’d had our topographical map since January. We are very puzzled.”
Said Noyes, “We eyeballed it and made our best guess. Road America re-asphalted the place for the first time in 30 years, and we figured we had a racetrack. But Dorna holds only the commercial rights to GP racing. We can’t influence safety homologation.”
Noyes said, “Road America did everything it could. They wanted the event, and we wanted them to have it.
I don’t know what’s next. But this doesn’t mean we’re giving up.”
Landes wins Grand National opener
Suspense is where you find it, and one of those places is at the start of the AMA dirt-track season in Daytona’s Municipal Stadium. Once again, defending champ Scott Parker’s luck at the slick short-track held: all bad.
Parker managed to find his way into the final, but could manage no better than an 1 lth-place finish. Chris Carr, Parker’s teammate when he isn’t racing the Harley Superbike this year, could manage only a little better: He was fourth, while dirt-track great Jay Springsteen finished sixth.
So, who won? Brett Landes did, notching his first-ever Grand National dirt-track victory. “1 just went out there and rode. I hope more of these follow,” he said.
The 25-lap final was short on fireworks, with Springsteen starting from pole, Carr next to him, and then Landes. Landes lead the first lap, and every lap thereafter, with Rich King and Ronnie Jones following him to the checkered in second and third positions.
Iron man of the night was 40-yearold Steve Morehead, who was starting his 21st year of flat-track racing. Morehead got a monster drive off the Turn Four cushion and tried to squeeze through on the outside of the start-finish straight to grab the lead of his semifinal event. He clipped a > haybale, crashed hard, and then was bodyslammed by Matt Wait, who was ejected from his own bike when it centerpunched Morehead’s downed machine. After giving the crowd a scare by lying inert for a number of minutes, Morchead got to his feet, waved-off a ride in the ambulance, gimped back to the pits and magically reappeared in the last-chance qualifier. He gamely rode to a second-place finish, but only the winner, Scott Parker, moved on to the final. Commenting later on the gutty performance, Morehead said sarcastically, “Hey, that’s why we get paid the big bucks.” Obviously a very tough guy.
Beating Jeremy
The question supereross competitors have been asking themselves for the last year or so again has an answer.
The question is this: “How do we beat McGrath?”
The answer remains this: Race him at Daytona.
Honda-mounted supercross superstar Jeremy McGrath has been all but unbeatable, racking up the supercross series championship last year and winning not only the final race of the ’94 season but the first five races of the ’95 season.
But McGrath’s apparent dominance crashed to a halt at the Atlanta Supercross, where Kawasaki’s Mike LaRocco beat him. And that dominance got nailed to the floor at the Daytona Supercross, just like it did last year. The winner was KX250-mounted Mike Kiedrowski, just like it was last year, and the year before that.
In Florida, McGrath’s chances for a victory disappeared right after the start, as he and John Dowd landed from the first jump. The pair tangled, and McGrath fell. “There was nothing I could do, really,” McGrath said later.
Nothing, that is, except pick up his bike, jump back in next-to-last, and run hard enough to finish the race in seventh place. In first place was a delighted Kiedrowski, without a win on the supercross circuit since last year’s Seattle event, with Mike LaRocco in second and Doug Henry, who led for a while, in third.
Besides Kiedrowski, the only other riders to have been so successful at the Daytona Supercross are Jeff Stanton, with four victories, and Bob Hannah, with three. >
Merkel gets revenge, Oliver gets another win
Daytona’s 750 Supersport race may be just a spear-carrier for the starring roles played by the far more popular Superbike and 600cc Supersport races, but it was a big-time event for Fred Merkel, coming off a bad year on Team Muzzy Kawasakis.
Now a Team Yoshimura Suzuki rider, Merkel won not only on the strength of his riding, but on the weakness of Tom Kipp's luck. Kipp, aboard a Yamaha YZF, skulked in Merkel’s draft in the 15-lap race’s final lap, waiting to slingshot around him. Then, in the Chicane, he got held up by a slower rider. By the time he made his pass of the lapper, Merkel, aboard a Suzuki GSX-R, was gone, and Kipp had to settle for second place, ahead of Suzuki-mounted Donald Jacks.
Merkel, whose last win came aboard a Muzzy Kawasaki ZX-7R at the Brainerd Supersport event last year, said of his win, “That was good fun. 1 just had to zap that lapped rider and spook him. It’s sweet revenge, after riding that green monster last year. My poor Kawasaki was so heavy and so slow, and these blue bikes are so nimble and so fast...I’m going to be there at every race.”
Meanwhile, back in the 250cc International Lightweight class, Rich Oliver came up winners, overcoming an early challenge from Takahito Mori and going on to win by a wide margin. Chuck Sorensen, aboard a bike owned by Oliver, finished in second.
“I’m proud to be one and two,” said Oliver of his Yamaha-mounted team’s success. Oliver is defending 250 national champion.
BEARS, Legends and vintage critters
Don't look now, but some of the best racing during Daytona’s Bike Week can be found early-on, during the MondayTuesday vintage bike celebration.
This involves much more than vintage bikes, though. It involves BEARS (British/European/American Racing Series); Legends, which pits riding legends, all mounted on IROC-like BMWs against each other; Sound of Singles, Battle of the Twins and much more.
Legends this year consisted of three very tight races held on Monday,
Tuesday and Friday. Combined winner was Gary Nixon, who won the first two races, with Dave Aldana second both times, and Jay Springsteen third on Monday and Roger Reiman third on Tuesday. Yvon Duhamel won the third race, with Springsteen and Reiman following him past the checkered.
BEARS was a showcase for Andrew Stroud aboard the Britten, who won from Ron McGill aboard a HarleyDavidson VR1000, giving Fl-D its best roadracing result of the Daytona weekend. Stroud said the race was a close one because his Britten was misfiring. Cycle World's European correspondent Alan Cathcart finished third aboard his Saxon-Triumph.
The Battle of the Twins saw Pablo Real win aboard a Ducati 888 ahead of a pair of EJrittens, ridden by Stroud and by Nick Ienatsch.
Sound of Singles was won by European and German series champ Tommy Korner aboard a 66 lee Rotax. Second was Cathcart, this time riding a 570cc Ducati Supermono. Third was Germany’s EJerbert Enzinger aboard a BMW F650.
Vintage days present a long menu of races all vying for premier spot-it’s hard to sort ’em out. The most valuable machines this year raced in 350 GP, so if that makes 350 GP the premier class, so be it. The machines were MVs, ridden by Jim Redman and E)ave Roper. Former GP standout Redman, in his first race in 26 years, won, after a backmarker put Roper, who had been in the lead, into the hay bales. The fastest of the true vintage bikes probably are the 500 Premier machines-that race was won by Todd Henning, aboard a Honda. He was followed home by Chuck Huneycutt, aboard a Seeley, and Mitch Boehm, on a Henning-prepped Honda.
