Post Race Notes from Vegas

Vance and Hines Ducati rider Jason Pridmore crashed in yesterday's SB race and was transported with a suspected broken arm to a nearby hospital. Pridmore crashed in water that came from Anthony Gobert's puking engine. Gobert's Ducati engine failed in the race and he DNF'd his first race back.

The TLR program is officially dead. American Suzuki Vice President Mel Harris told me yesterday that the TLR program will be "shelved" for a period of time while Yoshimura and Suzuki's racing arm try to develop the machine away from the racetrack. Harris said that he would not be surprised to see the TLR's back in action next season at some point.

Harris also said that Suzuki has come to agreement with Chaparral for them to run the Suzuki Supersport Support team in 1999. It will be Supersport only and my Suzuki sources say that the team will never have a Superbike deal. Regardless, the two hooks of the new team are the tuner, Kel Carruthers and their rider, Australian Superbike champ Damon Buckmaster. Carruthers (Australian by birth but has lived in San Diego for decades) is the 1969 world 250 champion and tuned for many riders in his career including Kenny Roberts, Doug Chandler and Eddie Lawson. I spoke with Damon yesterday at the track and Buckmaster is stoked to finally be escaping the low buck paydays of Australian roadracing. He'll be based in So-Cal and informal plans are for Bucky to live with his friend and fellow Suzuki rider Mat Mladin.

You'd expect Doug Chandler to be all bent out of shape with the result of yesterday's Superbike race and championship where a clutch cover bolt broke and spewed oil out of the machine, ending Chandler's run at his fourth AMA championship. But no. After most of the fans had left the track I had a long chat with Chandler as we leaned against his rental car. He said: "If it was something that I did, that I didn't have my head together or made a mistake, then yeah, I'd be disappointed. But I think that everybody saw that I was leading Ben when the bike broke. It's unfortunate, what happened, but our luck was running thin all season." Chandler came out of Sin City without the customary $100,000 championship bonus check.

There is no better indication that AMA Superbike roadracing is still a contest between what Eddie Lawson characterized in 1982 as "Four manufacturers who hate each other's guts," than when one of them holds a party. American Honda's Erion Racing along with Martin Adams, Dunlop & Brian Nelson Photography held a Randy Refrow going away party last night and there was so much red (as in Big Red) there it was like a revolutionary war battle. I strolled in and out of the shin-dig a few times and never saw more than a few from Suzuki, Yamaha or Kawasaki there. (Reader Laura Hardy notes: "I saw a bunch of Yosh guys at Randy's party. Mat Mladin, Steve
Crevier, Larry Pegram, Jeremy Daniels, and P. J. O'Rourke were all
over there at various times.")
 

The party featured a photo montage board with many classic Randy photos including one of Renfrow's old tuner Ron Barrick (now the AMA roadrace manager) in 1970s collar-length hair sitting on one of Renfrow's dirt bikes. Far out, Ron.

And as for Randy, it really isn't a retirement as much as it is just a cutting back. Renfrow admitted to me and other press snoops that he will run a few 250 nationals next year, maybe as many as four. Renfrow still has two important qualities needed to race: he's very fast, and he's well moneyed. Renfrow, as most know, owns a string of health clubs in Virginia that are very succesful.

Larry Pegram told me yesterday that he coverts another Ducati ride for 1999. Pegram rode for Eraldo Ferracci in 1996 and ran very well on those bikes, finishing on the podium and setting the pole that season at Road America. Pegram says that he wants a Ducati ride next year and is on the trail to getting one.

Pegram said that he basically gave up on the TLR Superbike two races ago and started concentrating on the 600 Supersport bike. The results have been very good; Pegram won the 600 race at PPIR and finished third yesterday after crashing out in the morning practice. Pegram's crew had to either build him a new bike Sun morn or set up Yates' B bike for his riding style, depending on which story Pegram is telling. Regardless, Pegram has been one of the most talked about Supersport riders in the last half of the season. He also said that the bike he raced yesterday had a bent fork, which drew catcalls of "maybe we should bend the fork on all his bikes" from one of his teammates.

I asked Pegram to comment on the record regarding the TLR Superbike. He sighed and said, "No comment".

And before the freight train with the phrase "the TLR sucks" on it gains any more momentum, consider this: in its first season, the Yosh crew has equaled the performance of the 1994 Honda RC45 Superbike, a machine that for the first two seasons of its life most wanted  burned at the stake.

A helicopter crashed at the track yesterday, right after the Superbike race. Of course that incident was on all the local television channels. Racing? Not.

Freddie Spencer III might be on the way as The Fred's wife Chelie' was hanging at the track during the weekend sporting a suspicious slight mid-abdomen bulge.

For the record: Anthony Gobert does not have a 1999 contract with VHR. At least as of last night he didn't. My understanding is that everything was a go (as in Go-Show) for 1999 up until Anthony delayed his return from Australia, then didn't stay in contact with the team, then came down with a peculiar case of pain in the neck (ironic, eh?) and then informally withdrew from the race, only to be cured (kinda) once his drug test result came back. (And no doubt Gobert's people could come up with a better recount of the scenario than mine, but nobody is talking)
The jury is still out on 1999 for Gobi and Terry.

My sources say that there is strong interest in Gobert from another AMA Superbike team.

Jason Pridmore vowed to friends to hide his nice guy aura after being treated by some as just another floormat in leathers recently. But Pridmore had a hard time hiding it in the qualifying press conference when in the middle of his qualifying recount he remembered that the last session had been red-flagged when Ricky Orlando crashed on the start of the front straight and had to be transported to the hospital. In a situation where most riders use the words 'me and I' a lot, Pridmore shone through like the jewell that he is. "Does anybody know how that guy is? Is he okay?" Pridmore asked the assembled gallery of press nerds. "I hope he's okay."
After viewing selfless Pridmore in the press conference, one Yamaha honcho said of Reg's kid, "That guy is pure class."

I  know these things can happen; every once in awhile you go to a search engine to find a new job, for example, so you punch in "job" and the results come back with one mention of an occupation,  and inexplicably, 4,762,987 pages containing the illicit phrase "blowjob". You accidentally click on one of those links, and say to yourself, "Golly, it seems as if I have mistakenly landed on one of those thousands of pesky internet pornography sites that I hear so much about in the mainstream press." Try the same thing with the word "racetrack" and something similar is likely to happen.  There's a porn flick just out,  which bears that word in its title, and features cameo appearances by some people you and I know as AMA Superbike riders.
As reported in most enthusiast publications, a porn team shot a scene at the Willow Springs round of the AMA Superbike series this year . The footage is now available to the masses. The film is titled "Racetrack Whores" (Dean notes: that's the friggin' best title they could come up with?!) and the two commercial copies that were floating around the paddock this weekend at Vegas had footage in them that several riders will not want their team managers to see.   One factory rider, in particular,  may very soon be reading the morals and public behavior clause in his factory contract.
Not that I viewed the film, of course. Watching two naked people in the process of an act which none too coincidentally sometimes produces more naked (yet much smaller) people is in my eyes pure filth and all you lecherous bastards that go in for that sort of thing should be ashamed of yourselves. (Note to all you AOL people with more fingers than brain cells:  I'm being sarcastic. Look up the definition)

Back to racing stuff: In the How to Start a Rumor Department, Scott Russell's personal assistant and cousin, Chris Jensen, was seen strolling the paddock at LVMS and spending a whole lot of time doing the same around the Harley-Davidson trailer. A nice guy and big Cruiser fan, perhaps Jensen just wanted to hang out with the black and orange this weekend. Or maybe he's giving Raymond Scott 'police officer hanging off the mirror of my car? Me?' Russell a field report?
But then, my WSC championship sources say that Mr. Daytona don't need no stinkin' AMA ride no more. He's got hisself a WSC offer.

And speaking of Cruisers, did you know that Yoshimura does not make any exhaust systems for "the pox of all motorcycling" Cruisers? It's true, sport bike, standards and sport-tourers only.

Eraldo Ferracci confirmed to me yesterday that he does not, as of that moment, have a Ducati deal for 1999 or beyond. The two parties are talking and it is expected by most observers that Ferrach' will be racing Ducatis next year, but for the time being, it is real hard to sign riders when you do not have the contract, nor the funds that you will use to pay them.
 

More Later -- Dean Adams