From a press release issued by Rich Oliver, with two believable sections and one that sounds like it came straight out of a hallucination:
Oliver dominates Laguna Seca AMA 250 race, with retro riding style!
Rich Oliver of Team Oliver Yamaha was the dominate rider in Sunday’s 250 Grand Prix race, during the Laguna Seca AMA and World Superbike event!
Oliver’s weekend started out badly with a crankshaft failure during the 8th lap of the first session on Friday, and a late night of repair work then followed. While Robert Ward, Oliver’s Crew Chief, prepared the parts and cleaned the rest of the motor in the team tent, Rich took the crankshaft to Dan Kyle’s performance shop in Seaside, California. There Dan and legendary rider John Long pried the offending bearing off the crank and replaced it with a spare. (A big THANK YOU goes to Dan and John for their hard work for Rich and the team.) Rich then raced back to the track at 10:00 p.m., and by 11:30 he and Robert had the motor rebuilt and back in the chassis.
With 5 hours of sleep, Rich led the time sheets Saturday morning with the now rebuilt motorcycle and then qualified on Pole position Saturday afternoon with a new track record time of 1:29.6! Things started to really click for Rich and Robert as Rich rode like his old 1997 self on Sunday. Rich tells us about the change, “I felt that I had been missing something with the new bike, and I swear that all we did was adjust the shock spring, the tire pressure and front ride height, and the bike just came alive! Now it was reading my mind and I could ride like I used to in my Championship years. I hope we can keep the bike working this well all year now and set some more speed records!”
Set records he did, as the 250 lap record went down to a 1:29.2, Rich riding with precise control and a now visible abandon as he powered away from the superb Roland Sands running in second place. The ever improving Simon Turner rode to a strong third in front of rising young star Jason Disalvo who finished in fourth place.
Rich now has won 59 AMA 250 races, and has a chance to win 61 by year’s end! He moves into 6th place in the 2002 Championship, 56 points behind hard riding points leader Chuck Sorensen on his Aprilia, who unfortunately had an engine failure on the sighting lap of the race and did not earn any points.
Perry Melneciuc rides hurt, rides his slower spare bike, but rides to within 25 points of Sorensen for Championship lead!
Perry Melneciuc is well known throughout the paddock for his strength and drive. An admitted workaholic, Perry once again proved that his reputation for toughness and determination is true by finishing an amazing 6th place on Sunday.
The reason 6th was so great–well, two reasons really–Perry had leaped off his primary machine on Saturday during Qualifying by executing a huge, power-sliding-donut-type-reverse-spinout-with-an-airbourne-head-whacker, on the exit of tricky turn two, and instead of the bike sliding to a stop it straightened out and ran by itself all the way down to turn three and smashed into the concrete wall, destroying the front half of the bike.
Perry walked away, but later a severely sprained left wrist and possible broken collarbone were diagnosed by the World Superbike medical clinic doctors. His Helimot race suit and Shoei Helmet did a great job of protecting the rest of him from further injury!
The other reason 6th was such a grand effort was that points leader Chuck Sorensen could not earn any points, so Perry is now representing Yamaha and Team Oliver in the points chase with a 210 point tally, only 25 behind Sorensen. Perry battled during the race with series standout Ed Sorbo, and Aprilia rider Colin Jensen, with Jensen finishing a great 5th, and Sorbo ending up lucky number 7.
Swimsuit model becomes much more attractive, but Oliver still suspicious of dramatic change!
Last week as you may remember, Rich went on a terrible first date with his swimsuit model hospital roommate, but even though she unfortunately seemed to be a very classy, intelligent and deeply spiritual woman, he decided to give her one more chance by inviting her to Laguna Seca this weekend. Rich tells us about their second date:
“Well, I picked her up at the Monterey airport on Sunday, and boy did I see a dramatic change. Gone was her elegant, understated look, the simple dress with the clean lines, her upswept hair, the one silver bracelet and minimal makeup.
“Now she bounced off the plane in a pair of super low-rise hip hugger Italian jeans, barely held up with a huge jeweled leather belt. She had on a shiny little top emblazoned with the words, ‘porn star’, that left nothing to my imagination, and was wearing so much jewelry that when she walked it sounded like a TZ250 blowing a rod at 14,000 rpm! Big curly blond and purple streaked hair, a healthy dose of that new ‘Spank’ perfume, and now lots of come-and-get-me makeup! All these changes were great accents to the huge high rise shoes that she had custom machined to match herself exactly to my height. She even had the Yamaha tuning fork logo custom made into an exotic looking belly ring!
“She sounded different too, lots of giggles and the repeated use of the word, ‘like’ in all her now shortened sentences. But still, I did get a bit suspicious when she turned around to show me her new ink, a tattoo in the center of her back just above her belt that said ‘97 Forever’.
“It all seemed too good to be true, and I know what they say, people don’t really change, but I hoped for the best. So when I brought her into the pits to meet everyone, I tried to enjoy the moment, now I had a woman hanging on my arm who I could be so proud of! I mean really, she had curves on her where other women only have straight-aways!
“Well everything was going well until just before the race, when my mechanic Robert noticed that the tattoo on her back was looking a little funny. He offered to blast it with contact cleaner to see if it was real or just a fake press on job, but I told him to hold off. Frankly, I was so happy that I didn’t want anything to dash my hopes that she had really changed so much for the better.
“At that point she was even calling me Richie, and giggling more than ever while she related to us a fascinating story that she had read in Cosmo, about how to have kids without ever getting fat and losing your job!
“During the race Robert said that the cameras were on her as much as the motorcycles, and she did a great job of jumping up and down and shouting ‘Go Baby!’ every time I or someone who looked like me would come down the front straight past the pit boards.
“Well, it sure was a great second date, and as I took her back to the airport I felt like a million bucks. Finally I had met my true soul mate. Only thing is, when she got out of the truck, I noticed something in her hand bag wedged between Cosmo and People magazine. I could swear she had a dog eared copy of Atlas Shrugged hidden in there……………”
Team Oliver Yamaha is sponsored by:
Yamaha Motor Corp. USA
Dunlop Tires
Advanced Motion Controls
SHOEI Helmets
Silkolene Lubricants
Wilson’s Motorcycles
Sunsports Motorcycles
Auto Werks Paint
Rick Shell Crankshafts
Lindemann Engineering
Supertech
Sharkskinz
VP Racing Fuels
NGK Spark Plugs
EK Chain
AFAM
Chicken Hawk Tire Warmers
Kushitani Leathers
Helimot Leathers
Marietta Motorsports
Ferodo and Braketech
Frenotec
I Need Stickers. Com
Doc’s Custom and Collision
South Coast Inc.
AST Research
Cytomax, Cyto Sport