Rich Oliver wins the third annual Roadracing World 250/50! Mystery School owner Oliver retrieved his 2003 Championship winning Yamaha from storage to win the Willow Springs event by 26.204 seconds, lapping up to third place. With help from Keith McCarty, Bob Starr and Jeff Jones from Yamaha USA, Ed Sorbo from Roadracing World Magazine, and 250 racer Bruce Lind he was able to find enough parts to run the machine one more time. Oliver comments, “I had a great time getting on track again after a year layoff, it felt awesome to race at Willow Springs! I really have to thank my long time mechanic Robert Ward for another outstanding performance. He has a knack for getting our Yamaha TZ running incredibly strong every time he works on it. We also had an intern with us, former Mystery School Pro Camp student Greg Johnson, who flew in all the way from upstate New York. He did a great job helping us with the pit work and bike maintenance. “I had a nice rhythm going on Friday in practice, it seemed that my bit of extra Mystery training paid off as I felt stronger and smoother on the bike than last year. I was able to produce the correct lap times in just 8 laps, last year it took me a lot longer to get going! “On Saturday we had some small engine problems in qualifying, we had damaged three carbon fiber reed petals in the morning warm up, so the bike lost its low end power and would barely start up. There wasn’t enough time to fix it before qualifying, but we were able to get the pole position by just half a second over young gun Bradley Adams. “Sunday in the race I got a good start, and rode hard for the first 10 laps, building up a lead over Michael Montoya and Mark Watts. The last 10 laps I just tried to get through traffic safely and take care of my Dunlop tires, as Willow is mostly right hand turns and they wear on that side a bit more. There were 41 riders in the event! “I have to say a special thanks to Roadracing World’s John Ulrich and the entire staff of Willow Springs for putting on such a great 250 Grand Prix race.” This year’s effort was sponsored by Rich Oliver’s Mystery School, Yamaha USA, Dunlop Tires, Shoei Safety Helmets, Micron Exhaust, Kushitani Leathers, Supertech, Motorex USA, LE Engineering, Cytomax, Drive Systems USA, Paint by Sabatini, Ferodo, Wilson’s Motorcycles, Chicken Hawk Tire Warmers, and Frenotech. The next events on the schedule for Oliver are Shoei University Seminars in El Paso, Texas on October 18th and then the next night in Las Cruces, New Mexico on October 19th. Then he welcomes the staff from Trackdaz Riding School for their Two Day Instructor Camp on October 22nd and 23rd. For more information about Rich Oliver’s racing career, there is a new on-line biography here: http://www.richoliver.net/RichOliverBio More, from a press release issued by Kenny Kopecky: Kenny Kopecky, WSMC #27 Willow Springs Motorcycle Club Round 10 / Toyota 200 Oct. 15-16, 2005 Rosamond, CA On a windy and sometimes wet event weekend San Diego’s Kenny Kopecky again swept three WSMC Twins sprint classes to extend his class and overall points leads at Willow Springs Raceway. The sprint races on Saturday were an exercise in caution as gusting winds caught out several racers in a variety of crashes, and caused delays in the event program. Kenny said “We’re always happy to get through the windy days out here, happy to run at a reduced pace and save ourselves and the equipment as much as is possible. Our Ducati Oceanside/Dunlop/Suomy/Maxima/Z supported 749R and 999R ran flawlessly once again and I hope we’ll have a nicer weather condition at the November meet so we can really let them fly!” In Sunday’s 4th annual WSMC Toyota 200 mile road race Kopecky had a strong ride on the only Ducati in the field. “This was a special event for us, as Ducati North America provided our team with a 999R streetbike. Ducati Oceanside installed our larger capacity 749R fuel tank on it along with the 749R bodywork and our stock wheels with some Dunlop slicks, changed the gearing and we went racing. The bike ran strong from start to finish and the stock brakes and suspension performed fantastically in the trying conditions”. While problems have arisen with scoring at Willow Springs and have prevented any preliminary results Kopecky knows the team performed great and is very happy to have participated in the event. His only previous 200 mile race experience was running in the Daytona 200 in 1988 and 1991. Kenny adds “The start was wild with the wet track, but Balz Renggli and Paul Lima set up some cut slicks for me and I was definately more confident then I would’ve been had I started on full slicks. We kind of snuck around some of the guys off the start and after Montoya crashed in turn 5 we were in 8th at the end of the first lap. As some faster riders came up to speed we only lost a couple positions and ran our two-stop strategy to perfection. I’m very proud of the work the Ducati Oceanside guys did and really want to thank all of them and Ducati North America for giving us with the finest Twin on the racetrack!” The next WSMC road race at Willow Springs is Nov. 18-20, 2005 and Kopecky can clinch the 2005 WSMC Overall Championship with a few more strong races at that event. “I always said at the beginning of the year our goal was to be top 10 overall one more time in my club racing career at Willow. We’ve already met all of our other goals with our multiple class Championships, so God willing we’ll exceed expectations of getting into the top 10…we’ve been at or near the top all year and the end of the long season nears”.