Double the Wheels : Ward Will Switch to Indy Light Racing

Jeff Ward, seven-time national motocross champion, will be riding in his final Supercross Saturday night at the Coliseum, but the 31-year-old from San Juan Capistrano isn’t retiring.

Ward is only shifting gears. And means of locomotion.

He has been testing an Indy Lights race car and hopes to make his auto racing debut Oct. 18 at Laguna Seca in one of Norm Turley’s P.I.G. (Personal Investment Group) Racing machines.

“I’ve always wanted to get to Indy some day, and this seemed like the right time to make the switch (from motorcycles to cars),” Ward said after testing a sore shoulder in a workout for the Coors Light Challenge, final event of the Camel Supercross series.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for four or five years, but first, I have some more things to do before I leave motocross for good. I thought I had ridden in my final stadium race after having surgery on my shoulder last month, but when the riots caused the Mickey Thompson group to postpone their race (from June 20 to Saturday), it gave me time to heal, and now I’m looking forward to it.

“The Coliseum is one of my favorite tracks. I’ve won there twice (the 1984 Supercross and the ’85 International Rodil Cup) and I’d like to make it three as a final farewell. My shoulder is still a little weak, but it should be well enough to race hard in the Coliseum.”

Ward underwent arthroscopic surgery June 4 to have calcium deposits removed from his left shoulder. Before the surgery, he was unable to lift his arm above his head.

“After the Coliseum, I’ll run the national 500cc outdoor series for the last time. I’m going to give that a serious shot because if I win, it would give me more national championships than anyone.”

Ward and Rick Johnson, who retired from motocross last year to drive trucks in stadium off-road races, are tied in all-time American Motorcyclist Assn. championships with seven each. Ward, who has ridden a Kawasaki in all of his title years, is the only rider to have won championships in all four professional motocross series.

Ward’s record includes two Supercross titles, in 1985 and 1987, and five outdoor championships: two 250cc, in 1985 and 1988; two 500cc, in 1989 and 1990, and one 125cc, in 1984.

This year’s five-race 500cc season starts Aug. 16 and ends Oct. 4, in time for Ward to get in a week’s testing in the Indy Lights car before heading for Laguna Seca.

“It’s a big step, starting out in Indy Lights, but from what I’ve learned testing at Willow Springs and Laguna Seca, I don’t see why I can’t do it at that level,” Ward said. “The horsepower and speed doesn’t bother me. I have the race track mentality it takes, and I know the feeling of traffic around me.

“My biggest problem will be learning to drive on an oval, where the walls are there. I know what it’s like to slide through a corner, and you can do that on some road courses, but it’s not very smart to try it on an oval.

“I also have to get used to pavement, although I have found in the few times I’ve ridden a bike on pavement it is more forgiving, more predictable. On dirt, the bike can let go before you know what’s happening. On pavement, you know more what to expect.”

Turley, a former Long Beach police officer whose cars carry the “Say No to Drugs” message, has previously given Indy Lights rides to Ted Prappas, P.J. Jones and Jon Beekhuis, the 1988 series champion.

“Everybody (on the P.I.G. team) involved with Jeff Ward has been impressed with his professional attitude, his willingness to listen and learn,” Turley said. “He’s done a lot of testing. He worked with Tommy Byrne and was running quick times and showed he has plenty of talent. We’re looking to next year, but we may run him at Laguna Seca in the last race this year to get a better look at how he’ll do in competition.”

Byrne, a series runner-up in 1988 and ‘89, has been this year’s P.I.G. driver.

“Tommy really helped me get up to speed,” Ward said. “I’ve probably had between 300 and 350 miles in the car and toward the end, my times were pretty close to his.”

Ward has been racing motorcycles since he was 5 and estimates he has ridden one about 300 days a year ever since, either practicing, racing or trail riding.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent three-quarters of my entire life on a motorcycle,” he said.

His first race is easy to remember--he has seen it so many times on the family movies his mother shot.

“It was around some trash cans set up in the dirt in the parking lot at Saddleback Park. I think it was the first time they’d held a minibike race there. I was riding a Honda Trail 50 and I won when I missed one of the trash cans and cut across the course. I picked up a couple of positions, but I wasn’t disqualified--my dad was the flagger.”

He got his biggest thrill, he said, when he won his first national championship on a 125cc Kawasaki when he was 22, but his most rewarding victories have been in helping the United States win the Motocross des Nations seven times.

“You really can’t explain how it feels to be on the verge of winning your first national championship,” he said. “It’s just real intense. I’d been racing seven years and when you’re that close to your first title, you think about everything that can happen--all bad.

“I went into the last race (at Washougal, Wash.) with an 18-point lead over Johnny O’Mara. I could have clinched (the championship) by finishing fourth, but I won the last moto. Winning that first one was a feeling I’ll never forget. All the other six were memorable, but not like the first one.”

Back when the United States won its first Motocross des Nations--an international competition involving all nations with motocross--in 1981, it was a tremendous shock to the European motorcycle fraternity. The sport was born in Europe, and Belgium, England, Czechoslovakia and others dominated until 1981. Once it happened, the United States never lost again. Last year’s victory was the 11th in a row.

Ward has been a member of the winning four-rider team seven of the 11 years, more than anyone.

“Individual wins are great for your own gratification, but team wins are more satisfying,” Ward said. “To be riding with guys you’ve raced against all year, and to be riding against the best in the world--when you win, it’s very special.

“Those first wins were the greatest. It must have taken the Europeans, especially the Belgians, about five years before they figured out it wasn’t a fluke. One year, in Sweden, I won both motos. Hardly anyone else ever did that.”

And his single best ride?

“From the significance of it, I would have to say my ride in the 250cc that year in Sweden when I won both it and the 500cc,” he said. “But probably the best moto I ever rode was at Hangtown (near Sacramento) in the 500 nationals in 1990. I got knocked down in the first turn and was dead last when I got restarted, but I came back to win. I passed Jeff Stanton to get the lead about four laps from the end. And I won the second moto, too.”

In the 14 years Ward has ridden at the national level, motocross has become a multimillion-dollar worldwide sport.

“When I started out, it was more of a daredevil sport, like playing king of the hill,” he said. “Only a few riders followed the circuit and for the ones who did, it was something to do that allowed them to have fun and make a little money, too. I never thought it would wind up being a career.

“When outside sponsors . . . started putting up prize money and bonus money, motocross really took off. It’s flattened out a little the last three years, but so has everything. Once the money increased, it became much more professional and riders started thinking about making a living--a good living--doing what they’d been doing for kicks.”

Jean-Michel Bayle, the Frenchman who swept all U.S. motocross championships last year, has bonus contracts with Honda and a clothing firm that could bring him more than $1 million this season. Damon Bradshaw, the 1992 points leader from Charlotte, N.C., collects $25,000 each time he wins a Supercross, and he has won a season-record nine. The series champion will also receive a $100,000 bonus, and most factories will match that figure.

Bayle, who also will be riding in his last Supercross in the Coliseum finale, is Ward’s choice as the best rider he has ever faced. Bayle will become a motorcycle road racer next year.

“Jean-Michel is so smooth that he sometimes looks like he’s not trying, but he always is,” Ward said. “He is a real goal-oriented person and when he decides he wants something, like he did last year when he wanted all three U.S. motocross championships, there was no stopping him.

“Bayle is the only guy who can do things he does on the track and get away with it. He is more talented that either Bob Hannah or Rick Johnson. He just never makes mistakes. Hannah was out of control most of the time, but was so strong and so agile that he could hold on. Johnson had the ability to pound out of trouble after making a mistake, but Bayle just doesn’t seem to make any.”

Hannah, Johnson, David Bailey and Ward were selected by five-time world champion Roger DeCoster, who is also coach of the U.S. Motocross des Nations team, as the best American riders ever. Bailey, who won the 1983 Supercross championship and 30 national events, was paralyzed from the waist down after an accident while preparing for the 1987 Supercross series.

After Saturday’s race, all of the top four, plus Bayle, will have left motocross to a new generation of riders.