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Jacks takes Formula USA title

Valvoline Suzuki’s Donald Jacks earned the 1992 WERA Formula USA championship with his thirdoverall finish at the series finale at Road Atlanta Raceway.

Jacks, who led teammate Michael Martin by 18 points going into the final, finished the season with 122 points aboard his Tom Houseworthtuned GSX-R1100. Martin, who garnered fifth overall at Road Atlanta, finished second for the season with a 100-point tally, just ahead of teammate Chuck Graves, making it a clean sweep of the top three overall series positions for the Valvoline Suzuki team. Suzuki-mounted Lee Shierts and Yamaha-mounted Fritz Kling, who competed on an OW01 fitted with a highly modified FZR1000 engine, rounded out the top five.

Formula USA races are run in a two-race, motocross-style format; the lowest point total for the day takes the overall win, with leg number two breaking all ties. Superbike pilot Dave Sadowski brought his GSX-R1100 home first in leg number one at Road Atlanta, with Kling and Canadian Steve Crevier, riding a Superbike-spec

ZX-7R, hot on his heels at the finish. Kling returned the favor to Sadowski in round two, with less than a foot separating them as they crossed the finish line. Sadowski managed to get around Kling with two corners remaining, but was unable to make the pass stick. Series champ Jacks, who will ride a Yoshimura Superbike in 1993, rode conservatively and smartly, finishing sixth and third, respectively, in each leg. A Honda win began to look even more possible when Kawasaki’s Larry Roeseier, Ted Hunnicutt and Greg Zittercopf dropped out less than 100 > miles into the event when their KX500’s engine blew up after suffering several seizures. But Big Red’s hopes faded when both 628s started tossing knobs from their rear tires-a problem that would plague Honda throughout the event.

Kawasaki celebrates Baja silver with gold

Twenty-five years of anything is a silver anniversary, something worth celebrating. It was in celebration of the 25th running of the Baja 1000 that 307 vehicles-122 motorcycles, 11 AT Vs, and 174 four-wheelers-showed up at the Ensenada, Mexico, starting line to take the green flag for one of motorsport’s most challenging events. The flag fell at first light, with the motorcycles the first group to start the rugged 1039-mile adventure south.

Because of past successes-Kawasaki teams have won the motorcycle portion of the event for the past five years-Team Green was favored to win. But long-time Baja racers and spectators weren’t counting out two American Honda teams mounted on XR628s.

With the exception of a flat about 300 miles into the race, things went well for Kawasaki’s surviving Openclass team. At 11:30 p.m., Garth Sweetland, aboard the triple-headlamped KX500 he shared with Danny Hamel and Paul Ostbo, slid into the finish line in La Paz, 16 hours and 50 minutes after it left Ensenada, to capture the overall win.

Team Honda, meanwhile, soldiered on to finish second, as the XR628 of Dan Ashcraft, Dave Donatoni and Johnny Campbell crossed the finish line with one of its two halogen lights dark, 12 minutes behind the lead Kawasaki. Another XR628, this one ridden by Bruce Ogilvie, Chuck Miller and Bob Rutten, finished third, 41 minutes behind the leaders. Kawasaki riders also took wins in the 250cc, Over-30, Over-40 and Over-50 classes.

Perhaps the happiest team of all was composed of Japanese riders Hiroyuki Watanabe, Katsuyuki Hasegawa and Keiichi Hasegawa. This trio, part of a sizable Japanese contingent in Baja to contest this event, piloted its Honda CR125R across the finish line just past noon the next day, almost 34 hours after the start, to win the 125cc class. □