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►Ken roberts was sitting
shoes-off and feet-up in the driver's seat of a white van. The van was nosed
against the fence that circumscribed the pit area. Behind the van, Bud Aksland
and Kel Carruthers were working on Roberts' 750 Yamaha. Roberts had his back to
the world.
"It's gonna be tough, huh," a reporter said.
"Tough?"
Roberts responded. "It's gonna be damn near impossible, starting from the back
of the pack. Besides, I ain't crazy about this place. I can't seem to get goin'.
Then when I do, I gotta stop."
Sears Point
is clearly not Roberts' kind of race track. Neither is Loudon. His great
strength as a road racer is negotiating high-speed turns on classic lines and
accelerating away from them with the strongest drive the tires can stand. Aside
from Turns One, Nine and Ten, Sears Point offers no corners compatible with the
Roberts style. It is a track which has big bikes burping around on the needles,
waiting interminably for a chance to air themselves out. It is a track which
pays no big rewards to the racer who selects lines precisely and stays on them
resolutely.
The
glistening black pavement bumps and slithers through the brassy hills of Sonoma,
California, dipping here and soaring there, barraging the riders with a
confounding assortment of camber switches, slick spots, stutter-bumps and
elevation changes. If Sears were a pitcher it would throw knucklers. If Roberts
were a hitter he'd like fastballs. Road Atlanta is Ken's kind of track. Sears
Point is not.
Roberts
would start from grid position # 35, which is to say pinned against the wall on
the last of seven rows. It is a grid position he is not accustomed to. He got
there because a chain adjuster stud snapped inside its splined magnesium axle
carrier just as Roberts launched his bike from the pole position of his
preliminary heat race, causing the rear wheel to cock, tire smoke to billow and
Roberts to come to a halt just out of sight around the first turn.
Coming into
Sears Ken was 19 points behind Harley-Davidson dirt-track specialist Ted Boody,
and thirteen adrift of National Champion Jay Springsteen. There was no hope of a
tie with Boody; second place pays only 16 points. The difference between winning
Sears, and finishing in some other position there, amounted to as much as $5500
in Camel Pro series halfway money. It was a sum grand enough to capture the
perfect focus and full attention of Mr. Roberts.
Not only
that. It is a well-known fact that for Ken to consider another venue for his
talents (like Europe), he feels he must first recapture the AMA National
Championship. Prior to Sears, his point total stood at 115—almost half of which
came from finishing second at Daytona and winning Charlotte and Loudon. His best
dirt track finish for the first half of the season had been a third, at Castle
Rock. He could not presume to sock away a significant sum of points during the
second-half dirt races either, his 750 four-stroke Yamahas continuing to have
difficulty transmitting a satisfactory amount of power to the ground. Including
Sears Point, there would be but three remaining road race Nationals (Laguna Seca
is a non-National Formula 750 race). To stay in the hunt for the National
Championship, Roberts had to have Sears. Badly. Yet there he was on the back
row, crowded against the concrete retaining wall with 34 riders in front of him
and 30 laps on a dipsy-doodle race track staring him in the face.
Roberts was
worried, naturally. He had to get past a lot of riders and he had to do it fast,
or else his chief protagonists—Skip Aksland and Gary Nixon—would get away. He
was especially worried about Aksland and Nixon. Gary didn't mind Sears—it is,
after all, very much like Loudon, and Nixon owns Loudon. Until the heat races
Sunday morning Nixon had the quickest lap times among the 750 riders, and then
Gary reeled off the fastest of the two heats. Skip Aksland, Roberts' other main
concern, turned the fastest heat race lap, and is not known to be disconcerted
by slow, awkward race tracks. He finished first at Long Beach, third (behind
Roberts and Nixon) at Loudon, and he rode exceptionally well in England during
the Match Race series.
So Ken had
to get around the pack quickly and hook up with at least these two, or forget
it. That would mean going rapidly through knots hyped-up of riders on cold
tires—risky business.
Roberts is
not above taking risks as long as they make some kind of sense to him. One risk
he was not prepared to take was participating in the Lightweight Expert 250
race, even though Kel Carruthers had the Mighty Tiny TZ ready. Too many things
could happen in the Lightweight race, Ken felt, only one of which was pleasant.
"Besides," he said, "I need the points more than I need the $650."
So the bike
was handed over to Skip Aksland, who promptly went out and finished a tidy
second behind Nixon in the fastest of the two Lightweight heats, comfortably
ahead of David Emde, Steve Eklund and Mike Cone. Randy Mamola, riding a Yamaha
prepared by Ery Kanemoto, won the other 250 Heat, with Mike Baldwin second, Dave
Schlosser third, Mike Baeder fourth and John Long fifth. Skip went on to win the
Final by an encouraging 12-second margin, but not before Gary Nixon had whistled
up through the pack from a lousy start, picked off second-place runner Randy
Mamola, closed the gap on Aksland and then cartwheeled Erv's C&J-framed Yam up
the road and into the dirt in ultra-fast, greasy, bumpy, off-camber Turn 10. "I
had just passed Randy and pitched 'er into that corner, then the back end
started comin' around. I thought to myself, 'Hook up! Hook up! Hook up!' but it
never did. It just spun out, and I was slidin' along the track, and here comes
Mamola, and it's like I'm lookin' right in his face and thinking, 'How's he
gonna miss me?' How's he ever gonna miss me?' "
Somehow
Mamola did, properly filling Gary with respect for young Randy's maneuvering
skill. Nixon, the tips of his shoulders patched with scar tissue, was doubly in
awe of the fact that he didn't get hurt. "Not a scratch," he said afterwards.
"These Bates leathers, boy, they're all right."
With Nixon
out of it Skipper was never threatened, nor was Mamola. But back a ways, David
Emde, dirt specialist Steve Eklund and Mike Baldwin were having a race. At the
outset of the duel Eklund led with Baldwin and Emde behind. Mike reeled in Steve
then Emde reeled in Baldwin, and found himself in the winner's circle for the
first time since his brilliant second behind Roberts at Riverside last season.
The Novice
250 bash looked to be, in the beginning, another walk-over for dirt track flash
Eddie Lawson. Lawson cruised to a decisive early race lead, but then his cruise
turned into a push as his engine tied up going past the pits. Behind him, in a
rollicking good three-way mix-up, were Bruce Sass, Steven Epstein and Mark
Jones. Then Epstein, who led, got upside down, leaving it to Colorado
motocrosser Sass, who put some distance between himself and Jones for the win.
Doug Draper, an AFM lion, was third.
The Novice
race was the last before the National, for which the standard crew of toughies
lined up, all of them in front of Roberts: Ron Pierce; Dave Aldana, now riding
for Paul Dahmen; Gene Romero, who had given Nixon a good run for his money in
their preliminary heat race; Dale Singleton, looking better than he has since
his glorious Junior year; Gary Scott; Skip Aksland, feeling pumped; John Long,
recapturing his smooth brilliance of three years ago; Mike Baldwin, armed with
the Yamaha 750-D that was so long in coming and riding on Dunlop tires, a
selection he would later regret; Rich Schlachter, a charging Easterner suffering
from an arm injury he had sustained when his 250 seized and crashed in practice
on Friday; David Emde, hoping to wear 'em down with his little TZ-350; Mike
Cone, coming off an earlier crash; Wes Cooley; a steadily-improving Roberto
Pietri; tireless campaigner Bob Wakefield.
Every eye
was on Roberts as the green flag fell, and he came off the line with all guns
blazing. As the field streamed around the left-hander and up the hill, Roberts
passed rider after rider after rider. Having dispatched twenty or so with his
first broadside, Ken was balked halfway up. "Keep going! Keep going!" screamed
the crowd. The blocker went for the apex of Turn 2 and Roberts got back on the
gas, pulling under another three or four before he nipped across Turn Three and
went out of sight. People on the hill were yelling, hitting each other, jumping
and pointing, their eyes bugged out in astonishment. Roberts next flashed into
view going up the hill into Turn Four. "Did Roxy say Roberts was in sixth?"
asked an observer. "Couldn't be," came the answer. "Must be sixteenth." Wrong.
Sixth.►
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◄The Sears
Point track is laid out in such a way as to encourage crowds to form in
different places. As Roberts shrieked around on that first lap, the roar
followed him marking his progress. It was a roar of bewilderment and disbelief,
a roar comprised of thousands of "Ohmygod's" and "Didyouseethat's?" It was the
kind of sound large groups of people make when collectively they see something
dangerous being done that has never before been done so well.
What was it
like for the other guys on the track? Listen to Ron Pierce: "He came around me
and four other guys on the outside, both his tires skiddin' and the crankcases
draggin' on the ground. Then he turned left when the track turned right, dropped
'er down on the other side of the cases, more tire skiddin', went around five
more guys and that was the last I saw of him. I coulda sworn he was gonna crash
at least twice, right there in front of me. Couldn't believe it. Never seen
anything like it."
What was it
like for a veteran race-watcher? Listen to Don Vesco: "I could see him come out
of Turn 11 [a dead-slow right-hander] and go through 12 [a much faster left that
leads onto the grid area]. He'd go through 12 with the back of the bike hung out
a bit and the front wheel kind of lofting off the ground. And he was tucked in."
What was it
like for Gary Nixon? "He came past me there towards the end of them real fast
esses—where nobody passes nobody? He was just there, and then he was gone, and
I'm thinking, Wow. You're really good."
Going up the
hill towards Turn 3, second lap, Roberts was fourth. Among others, he had
already dispatched Gene Romero, Dave Aldana, Pierce, Baldwin, Long, Cone and
Schlachter. In his sights were Singleton and Nixon, the latter already
experiencing problems with a leaking quick-fill. Flick! past Singleton. Woosh!
past Nixon. Only Aksland remained, a good way ahead.
Roberts tore
distance out of Aksland in chunks. Coming through the esses on lap four Roberts
made up 50 yards, another 25 belting down the hill and around bumpy Turn Nine.
There was young Skipper, right in the cross-hairs. He was heading into Turn Ten,
the corner that had bitten Nixon in the 250 race. Aksland had been burning
through Ten as hard as anyone at Sears, and he had been doing it all weekend.
Roberts could have waited. Not a chance: Skip sat up, prepared for the corner
and Roberts drilled him, right there in the grease and the bumps, and burst into
the lead.
It had been
four laps of the most violent and precise road racing anyone had ever seen. In
the heaviest traffic, he had worked his lap times down to 1:46.8—fully a second
and a half quicker than he had gone all weekend—and he had dismantled the best
road racers in America like they were on 125s.
On lap
seven, safely in the lead, the fever went out of Roberts' riding. But if you had
ridden in a cattle car from Kansas City to Sears Point, that 12 minute eruption
would have made it worth the trip. "He really pulled his finger out, didn't he,"
Carruthers commented later. Had Kel ever seen him do anything like it before?
"Yeah, he was that way at Imola this year. Just made up his mind he was gonna
win the damn race."
With Roberts
riding with only his normal brilliance, attention shifted to the battle for
third between Dale Singleton, David Aldana and Gene Romero, which was ultimately
settled in favor of Singleton. Aldana commented to Don Vesco afterwards that if
he had continued to go as hard as he was going, he surely would have crashed.
Romero stayed with it until he ran off the track in Turn Seven, and then had
difficulty getting a drive going again. So Dale finished third, Gene was fourth,
Ron Pierce was fifth, Aldana sixth, Mike Cone seventh, John Long eighth, Wes
Cooley ninth and Roberto Pietri tenth. The average speed of the race was 82.2
mph, more than 3 mph faster than the 250 Expert race and about 15 mph faster
than the last National held at Sears Point, which Art Baumann won on his Suzuki
500 twin in 1969.
Only the
Superbike Final remained, along with a sidecar race. If Sears was difficult for
750 Yamahas, it was practically a motocross track for some of the Superbikes.
Reg Pridmore, riding the Pierre DesRoches-built, Racecrafters
sponsored
Kawasaki KZ-1000, had come to Sears two weeks before the National for an AFM
event. Entered in two races, Reg had pulled off the track during the first to
change shock absorbers, and had crashed in Turn 11 on the first lap of the
second race when he lost the front end. On that day Ducati rider Paul Ritter, a
local star at Sears and current leader in AFM 750 Production points, had turned
his best-ever lap-1:55.9. Reg had gotten no closer than 1:57; neither had I,
although the Cycle Ducati had handled the track in admirable fashion.
As the
National weekend progressed it became clear that Ritter, aboard his Dale Newton
860 Ducati, was going to be extremely difficult to beat, even though he was
participating in his first AMA Super-bike Production event. He got down to
1:51.4 during the Saturday afternoon preliminary heat and had won, despite going
through his own windshield after running off the track trying to go around Steve
McLaughlin, now riding the notorious Yoshimura Kawasaki, and Reg Pridmore. Our
Duck had finished second, running 1:53 lap times. Steve was third, Reg was
fourth and Ron Pierce, on the Johnny's of Bakersfield ex-Butler & Smith BMW that
he had used to win Loudon, was fifth.
McLaughlin
got the lead off the grid in the Final and gyrated in front until Turn Seven,
where our Duck squeezed by. Ritter got past the Yosh bike in Turn Nine, Steve
pulled off the track when the activities of his Kawasaki caused his knees to
knock off both outside plug caps, and Pridmore locked himself into a nice, noisy
dice with Pierce. Ritter and I, running in front with about four seconds between
us, settled down to reasonably consistent 1:52s, until the Cycle Ducati,
bothered with miscellaneous clutch and oil breather problems, slowed towards the
end of the race. Ritter, riding with blood in his eye, turned in a pair of 1:51s
on laps 12 and 13, rumbled into the lead in the Carrousel turn and won his first
National on his first try. Our Ducati was second, Ron Pierce out-wobbled Reg for
third, and Leroy Gerke, on his Moto Guzzi, was fifth. The race's average speed
was 79.5 mph, or 2.7 mph slower than the 750 National. Larry Coleman and Wendell
Andrews blew off the rest of the sidehacks and the weekend was over.
People who
were there departed remembering not the 250 Expert race, nor the Novice race,
nor the sideways sidecars, nor the Superbike race. They departed thinking about
Ken Roberts and his impossible, scorching lunge up through the 750 pack. It was
the first time a National has ever been won from the back of the grid. But it
was the first time Ken Roberts has ever started from the back of the grid. Until
he is struck once more with heat race gremlins and is relegated to the last row
hinterlands, we will not see such a rare and precious display again.■ |
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Competition 
