Larry Lawrence | October 12, 2016
Photo by Henny Abrams
Consider this: By March of 1997, Jeff Emig had already raced the Daytona Supercross five times and the record wasn’t anything to write home about. He finished eighth a couple of times, ninth once and then starting in 1995 his results showed that he was finally starting to catch on to the most challenging of AMA Supercross tracks. In ’95 he scored a solid fourth, coming in behind Mike Kiedrowski, Mike LaRocco and Doug Henry. Then in ’96 he scored another top-five result, taking the flag in fifth.
But then the breakthrough in 1997. Emig raced his factory Kawasaki to victory over the hard-charging Suzuki factory duo of Greg Albertyn and Jeremy McGrath. It was a milestone victory for Emig, who would go on to hold off McGrath to win that year’s title, breaking MC’s string of four-consecutive AMA Supercross Championships. Consider that if McGrath would have been able to beat Emig that year, he would have walked away from the sport having won eight straight Supercross titles.
Interestingly, it was also Emig playing the foil in ’96, who beat McGrath in St. Louis, keeping MC from scoring an undefeated AMA Supercross Series.
Emig’s mid-season victory at Daytona just might have been the catalyst that carried him on to that year’s championship. Many riders will tell you that winning the Daytona Supercross means more than just taking a Supercross win – such as you are the fittest rider, the one who can take on the most technical of tracks and it elevates a rider’s confidence to new levels.
Emig was at the peak of his skills and primed to win the Supercross title in 1997. He first began racing in the series at select rounds starting in 1990, and as a factory Yamaha rider, he campaigned the series full time starting in 1992. He’d finished in the top 10 each season from that point and became a true contender by 1994 when he finished fourth in the championship. He was third in ’95 and then runner up to the King of Supercross, McGrath, in 1996, Emig’s first season with Kawasaki.
Emig ’97 saga was just one chapter in one of the most remarkable Supercross seasons in the history of the series. That year’s campaign began with the shocking news of McGrath’s defection from Honda to Suzuki just days before the season opener in Los Angeles.
Former world motocross champion Greg Albertyn stole McGrath’s thunder early on by giving Suzuki its first Supercross national victory in six years. From that point on the series became one of the most competitive ever, with a total of seven riders taking victories, the most since 1985 when a record eight riders stood atop the podium.
The season will also be remembered for the sudden rise of four-stroke bikes. Lance Smail put a KTM four-stroke in the field at the Daytona Supercross. Interestingly, while fans today look back longingly at the two-stroke era, the announcers and fans closely followed Smail’s progress on the 550cc KTM thumper and were thrilled when he made the field for the final. It’s thought to be the first time a four-stroke qualified for a Supercross main event. Smail’s performance was a precursor. The season ended with an important milestone; the first Supercross win for a four-stroke motorcycle. Doug Henry rode a Yamaha prototype to victory in the series finale, a predecessor of the shape that Supercross and motocross racing would take in years to come.
An indication of how the popularity of Supercross was on the upswing is that Emig won the ‘97 title before the greatest single-season yearly crowd ever to watch AMA Supercross. A record total of 691,676 fans came through the gates during the 1997 series. Millions more watched on the weekly shows broadcasts on ESPN2. They were lofty times for the then 23-year-old series.
The Daytona Supercross was round seven of the 15-race series. Doug Henry entered the event with an eight-point lead over Emig. Both riders had won two rounds coming into the Daytona event. Albertyn and Damon Huffman were the other winners on the season.
McGrath, who broke an AMA Supercross record by winning 14 of the 15 races just the season before, almost unbelievable hadn’t scored a victory to that point in ’97, but had been consistent enough to be third in the championship coming into Daytona just 10 points behind Emig.
So that was the setting for that year’s race on the sandy and energy-sapping, Gary Bailey-designed track at Daytona International Speedway. Henry was looking to hold on to his series lead, Albertyn and Emig were both looking like strong candidates and McGrath, the defending Daytona Supercross winner, was itching to score his first victory of the ’97 season.
McGrath won the first heat race, after being passed and led for a time by Damon Bradshaw on a privateer Honda. Bradshaw had circled Daytona on his calendar months before and had planned on a good showing, but when race weekend came Bradshaw was laid low by the flu. Still he had just enough energy to show a flash of brilliance and pass McGrath and lead bringing the fans to their feet.
Emig faced a stiff challenge by Honda’s factory rider Steve Lamson in the second heat, but eventually took a narrow win.
Henry won the third heat over teammate Ezra Lusk.
Emig used the power of his Kawasaki and the grip of his Bridgestone tires to nail the holeshot at the start of the 20-lap main. Lusk, Bradshaw, Henry, Larry Ward, Albertyn, Ryan Huffman and Lamson followed the leader closely in the early going.
Leading Suzuki riders McGrath and Mike LaRocco got terrible starts. McGrath knew his chances for a win were going to be tough stuck way back in the pack, but he began slicing through the field at an astonishing speed.
Series leader Henry was off his game, still hurting from a crash in the AMA Motocross opener at Gatorback, where he tweaked his arm. By lap five he began to drop off Emig’s pace and fell from second to an eventual 10th-place finish.
The only rider who looked to have any hope of catching the flying Emig was Albertyn. He gathered the leader in a few times, but ultimately could not sustain a long enough charge to catch him.
“The track was so rough it was difficult to just keep riding smoothly every lap,” Albertyn admitted. “I’d close up a little bit on him and then make a mistake and then it would open up and then I’d close it again.”
In the end Emig finished five seconds up on Albertyn. McGrath’s charge propelled him all the way up to third at the end. Emig left Daytona with the series lead, one he would never relinquish (although McGrath had a second-half of the season rally and got to within two points of Emig after round 12 in Pontiac, Michigan).
It was sheer jubilation for Emig after finally conquering the Daytona Supercross.
“Now I can get my name on the plaque on the Wall of Winners,” Emig said, referring to Daytona’s museum. “I saw all those names up there like Bob Hannah, Rick Johnson and I thought, ‘Man, I want to get my name up there with those guys.’”
Emig never won the prestigious race again, but he won the championship that year and his name is now on that wall in the museum as well as the record books for his memorable victory at Daytona ’97.