Suzuki's Danny Laporte Survives 500cc Championship
SUZUKI’S DANNY LAPORTE SURVIVES 500cc CHAMPIONSHIP
Danny LaPorte may have held the points lead every step of the way in this year’s AMA 500cc National Motocross Championship, but for the Team Suzuki rider from Yucca Valley, California, just surviving each of the 10 races in the series was a major accomplishment. The season had kicked off last spring with no less than eight riders battling side-by-side for the win at the first race in Southwick, Massachusetts, LaPorte emerging from the flying sand the day’s overall winner. It was obvious that the 500cc National class would be the most difficult one to win and in the weeks that followed, wins were posted by other factory stars like Team Yamaha’s Mike Bell and Rex Staten and Kawasaki’s Gaylon Mosier.
But if the Open class was the most competitive and difficult to win in, it was also the most dangerous. By the end of the series at St. Petersburg, Florida, eight of the top 10 riders in the class were out of action due to injuries. Included in the list were two previous 500cc title holders, Honda’s Marty Smith and Yamaha’s Rick Burgett, both with shoulder injuries. Other top factory riders out of racing included Suzuki’s Darrell Shultz with a badly sprained foot, Kawasaki’s Tommy Croft with a knee injury, and then top series contenders Mosier with a broken leg and Staten with a dislodged kidney.
The only other factory star left in one piece to give LaPorte any competition in the final few races was Yamaha’s Bell. With three races remaining, LaPorte had ridden so consistantly that he had built up a seemingly safe points lead which Bell couldn’t possibly beat. But then the unexpected happened. LaPorte’s usually reliable factory RN-440-79 works Suzuki tuned by Pat Alexander quit running one moto due to a defective kill button, allowing Bell to take the overall win that day and move to within nine points of LaPorte’s series lead.
With two races left, at Charlotte and St. Petersburg, Bell now felt he had a chance to close back up on La Porte and possibly win the championship for himself. At Charlotte the two ran wheel to wheel the entire day as LaPorte won the first moto by a scant 10 ft. and Bell charged back to win the second moto, thus securing the overall win for the second week in a row. LaPorte’s nine point series lead remained the same, though, and the championship would go down to the wire in Florida.
At the Sunshine Motocross Speedway track in St. Petersburg both LaPorte and Bell vowed to make the 500cc championship a battle all the way to the finish line. The crowd wasn’t disappointed. LaPorte grabbed the start of the first moto as Bell tagged his 454cc OW-41 off in fifth place, quickly pushing his way up to catch LaPorte for the lead after just 10 min. For the next 20 min. the pair traded the lead at least a dozen times, with Bell even pulling a 5 sec. lead ahead of LaPorte at one point before being reeled back in and being repassed again. Then, with just a couple of laps to go in the moto. Bell twisted his knee in one of the track’s deep sand berms and was forced by the pain to slow down drastically and claim a distant second.
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The pain of his twisted knee had subsided for the seeond moto and Bell came back determined to still try and pull off the overall win even if the prospect of taking the championship had diminished with LaPorte’s win of the first moto. Bell hole shot the start of the second moto and disappeared with the lead as LaPorte, almost unbelievably, stalled his bike behind a crash in the first turn and eventually got running again in 23rd place. If they had finished out the race like that. Bell would have won the race and the championship, but LaPorte began passing riders faster than seemed possible and in places where there was hardly room to do so. Within three laps LaPorte had moved into eighth place which was worth just the right amount of points to tie Bell for the title. A few more laps and LaPorte was up to fifth position where he slowed up to safely finish out the moto without chancing a fall in battling with Bell and the other front runners. For the third week in a row Mike Bell won the battle, but it was Danny LaPorte who had won the war.
—Jim Gianatsis
500cc CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS
