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RACE WATCH

From bikes to cars

“Any world championship-winning bike racer who moves to cars has every prospect, absolutely, to become a champion in cars,” is how Mario Andretti puts it, and following in the grand tradition of Joe Leonard, John Surtees and Mike Hailwood, “our” champions are flocking to car racing at the sport’s highest levels.

The roster is impressive: Eddie Lawson, the four-time 500cc World Roadracing Champion, has landed an IndyCar ride; Jeff Ward, the only racer ever to win the AMA 125cc, 250cc, 500cc and Supercross championships, is starting his second full season at the wheel of an Indy Lights car; 1993 500cc GP World Champion Kevin Schwantz raced in Australia’s stock-car series all winter in preparation for either NASCAR, Winston Cup or SuperTruck competition in the U.S.; multi-time AMA MX and SX champ Rick Johnson has graduated from off-road trucks to a SuperTruck; and former U.S. and World Roadracing Champion Freddie Spencer recently emerged in a Formula Ford 2000 after dodging press inquiries about his plans for the 1996 season.

Lawson, who retired from bike racing after the Suzuka 8-Hour in 1994, has been actively seeking a top-flight IndyCar ride. He impressed onlookdied at the age of 29 near his home in Bloomington, Minnesota, on January 19, ironically just one day before his hometown supercross.

At the Minneapolis Metrodome, racers formed a semi-circle around a lone bike plastered with number-one plates during a heartfelt tribute to the fallen champion.

Schmit is one of five Americans to win an FIM world motocross title. He left the States in 1990 and captured the 125cc World Championship for the Bieffe Suzuki team, then switched to the 250cc class in 1992 and, riding for Chesterfield Yamaha, brought that title home, too.

Semi-retired, Schmit and his wife Carrie moved back to Minnesota in 1995. He won the AMA Sound of Singles MX crown riding a CCM, placed fourth at his hometown AMA 250cc national and even found time to begin a new career in roadracing. In his AMA 600cc supersport debut at MidOhio, Schmit took 14th, and followed that up with 18th at Road America.

Greg Albertyn, three-time world MX champion from South Africa, raced with Schmit in Europe. He remembers, “We had a lot of fun. Mentally, Donny was very, very strong. He knew exactly what he wanted and was 100 percent dedicated to getting it. He was flexible, broad-minded, was there for just one thing-the world championship-and didn’t let anything stand in his way.”