Daytona Pro Twins Gp
DAYTONA PRO TWINS GP
WINNER: DALE QUARTERLEY
A tale of three Twins
RACERS GENERALLY ARE A superstitious lot, with many of them downright spooky about making pre-race predictions. Not so Dale Quarterley. When asked how he thought the Daytona Pro Twins GP race would go for himself and his Fast By Ferracci Ducati 851, Quarterley, last year's Pro Twins GP champion and the pole-sitter for this race by a .3-second margin, didn't flinch, mutter incantations or stroke a rabbit's foot. "The number-one plate will prevail,"he predicted.
And prevail it did, but only by the width of a front wheel rim, and only after 15 hard laps of close, aggressive racing on Daytona’s 3.56-mile road course with Australian Paul Lewis, mounted on the Commonwealth Racing Honda, and New Yorker James Adamo, on the Team Leone Ducati 85 1.
RACE WATCH
In what some saw as the best racing of the entire Daytona '89 experience, the trio swapped the first three positions throughout the 15-lap race and Lewis, whose bike is powered by a Honda V-Twin dirt-track engine, looked set for the win as he and Quarterley, having opened a bit of a lead on Adamo, exited the backstraight chicane on the final lap. But as the pair hammered through Turn Four's 31-degree banking. Quarterley pulled alongside Lewis and pipped him by inches across the finish line.
It looked a close, exciting finish; and while the excitement can't be denied, the closeness may have been deceptive, for Quarterley said he only rode fast enough to win, while Lewis said he was tip-toeing his way around full throttle because a prerace inspection revealed that the main-bearing journals of his engine's cases were shot. “I’m just glad to have finished.’’ he said.
Quarterley noted that while other Pro Twins GP teams have considerably developed their bikes during the off season, the Fast By Ferracci team had only painted the frame and wheels of its 85 1. The bike is so thoroughly developed, said the lanky redhead, that save for “playing with the cams and lightening the crank and the rods, spending time on tedious things like that,” very little remains that can be done to it, even within the scope of the liberal Pro Twins GP rules. The result is that he will have to race harder this year than he’s had to in the past, Quarterley said. But even at that, he’s confident he can maintain his possession of the numberone plate. He said of his Daytona Pro Twins GP race, “I can go faster than we went; I could have run the infield harder. I got it broke loose once or twice. On the (FBF Ducati 851) Superbike, you'll do that several times every lap. I was never in doubt. 1 felt like I was putting through the infield. I’d like to think I can do this all season.”
If he’s right, if he can live up that prediction as well as he did to his preDaytona Pro Twins GP prediction, Quarterley's competitors will have to mutter incantations of their own.
—Jon Thompson
Suzuka sizzler
“I had to fight for it all the way,” said Kevin Schwantz at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix, the first 500cc roadrace GP of the year. “But I knew I would beat him.”
This came after a knock-down, drag-out battle at the Suzuka circuit between Pepsi/Suzuki rider Schwantz and Lucky Strike/Yamaha rider Wayne Rainey. Rainey had been the leader through most of the race, but Schwantz came up to pass him on the last lap and win by a half-second. Eddie Lawson was third after a horrible start in his debut Rothmans Honda ride, making it an American 1-2-3 sweep.
As for other U.S. hopefuls, Bubba Shobert finished 1 1th and Freddie Spencer was 14th. Spencer started from ninth qualifying position and actually jumped into the lead briefly. Halfway though the race, though, he slowed. Randy Mamola finished 16th while Doug Polen, in his first-ever GP. dropped out with front-brake problems.
Clipboard Sick leave
How quickly times change. Nobody doubts that Rick Johnson is the best supercross rider in the world. But all of a sudden, his teammate Jeff Stanton is favored to win the supercross championship.
Johnson injured his hand in practice before the first outdoor national of the year. And now it looks like Stanton, who was second in the points, will inherit the lead. But Stanton is no slouch, either. He won the Atlanta Supercross against a then-healthy Johnson, and he won the Daytona and Houston Supercrosses against everybody else. At Tampa, however, Stanton blew a transmission, and Jeff Ward, who’s now back from injuries, took the win. The way things are going, this season’s champion will be the most-healthy rider, not necessarily the fastest.
