You can point to very few races as seminal or game changing, but the 1986 Suzuki GSXR Cup Finals at Road Atlanta was one such event. The GSXR1100 final was simply unbelievable with the race coming down to Doug Polen and Dan Chivington. Chivington turned in one of the all-time great last laps in American road racing to take the victory. “Everyone else had 1mm overbore on their bikes,” Chivington recalls. “Mine was stock bore and it would get killed off the corner, but on the big end I could draft by them with no problem since my bike would whistle on up another couple hundred RPM. I stuffed David Emde in that same turn back in my 250 days and pretty much did the same thing to Polen. I drafted by at the last possible second on the back straightaway and then if you’re going to outbrake me you’re going to end up in the pit lane.” The Suzuki GSXR Cup for the first time paid club racers enough money that if they won they could actually turn a profit. It also helped launch what would become the most successful line of sports motorcycles of all time.
Doug Polen leads Ron Ewerth and Dan Chivington in the 1986 Suzuki GSXR1100 Cup Final held during the WERA Grand National Final at Road Atlanta in November of 1986. Chivington took over the lead on the final lap to win the race. (Larry Lawrence photo)
Rider Files 
Chiv stuffed Rocket Ron into T11, on the last lap, and Polen made it past a few seconds later in T12, when Ewerth’s stock exhaust cannister (mandatory for the inaugural GSXR Cup Final in ’86) touched down, and he ran wide, allowing a waiting to pounce Polen a way past at the last second.
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And if I might add to the factual events of this race … the bike “Rocket” Ron Ewerth was riding that weekend was actually my bike which I had loaned to Ron for the GSXR-1100 money race. I can tell you that it was absolutely “box stock” with no 1mm over sized pistons as mentioned by Chivington. If Ron wasn’t racing in the $$$ race, I would have otherwise built a full spec super bike engine to compete in the A-Superbike Championship race, 2 races later that same day. All we could do that day in the very limited amount of time we had between 2 races and with the help of our shared tuner Vic Fasola, was to quickly throw a set of 36mm Mikuni’s, a Kerker exhaust and fit up a spare set of wheels with slicks to the otherwise “Stock” GSXR-1100 for me to ride. Even though we barely made it to the grid in time,I still manged to finish 2nd to Thomas Stevens and the bike was not right, dropping 2 cylinders on the brakes getting into the corners and then when getting back on the gas driving out and leaned over the bike would suddenly come back on all 4 and damn near throw me off the thing. These facts only confirm that Rocket Ron rode the wheels off that bike that day and he did not have the advantage of 1 mm over pistons. Ron had that race won until the final 2 corners.
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