Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125664
was one mechani cal headache after ther. Russ Gregory (American Eagle) first to go, developing clutch ditfily at the starting Une. Fla t tires and Ing gears were now the order at the atrlck was first to reach check point , and went on to be first to complete first lap, with an elapsed time at one , six minutes and thlrly four seconds. ter that It was dit!lcult to determine conte nders because at the staged start. But Roberts, Smith, and qvarna mounted Billy Silverthorn r e r ight In there. . t the start, riders wer e, for tI:e st part, riding one lap at a time. But e of the team s, Includfng Lars son Baker, chose to run two laps befor e tchlng off. But as the day wor e on, the toughest riders wer e having cully completin g the full f!fly mil es. e pit area was a mass of dozing ers, broken parts and em pty Gatorade es . The faster riders were nowstretching their advantage over the rest at the Id, 'and for a shor t period of tim e, J .N. erts and company unofficially held lead over Patrick and ' Bowers. Inestlngly, after four laps the Hus ky was r ecorded as having a fine onedreds at a minute lead over the boys m Yamaha. ore brok en machine s, and mor e usted riders. lna1ly, just as the sun was going , Patrick pulled across the line for wave at the checkered flag . Martino n't far behind, but Hanss on had to go last few miles In alm ost total darks. Some at the field had complete as as three laps, and were vainly trying creep around the ro ugh stuff with e-shlft li ghting equipment. ike most everything else connec ted Las Vegas, the Mint " 400" was ed with gelder and honey-coated lie relations. Indeed, It was a race. ery fine one, at that. But it was a far fr om the weekend get- togethers nsored by your local neighborhood • There were r ules and more rules, , with the poss ible exception of the ets , an abundance of American bucks r equir ed before moving a muscle. ace officialdom, for Instance, held a -wow Sunday to dete r mine: A. What s to admit to the pit area; B. How to e spectator s on dis ta nt hills to pay admiss ion tab, and; C. How to keep riders from getting drunk before the l1cily pictur es were shot. After all official said. the Mint "400" Is a l1clly function, and the r ide rs are gated to do their part. Yes , som eone agreed, but theY're like ch1ldr en, they'll jus t go out and get dr unk !f don't for ce them to s it sUll. Well, er atflcial sugges ted, we couldten not to pay them If they didn' t iw up tor the pictures. We can' t do t, at cour se , he added. But atleast we tell them that. McLaughlln.Utsey, CageoSteen and Fish-Jagow get the wave of the green f lag. 74 riders started the annual class ic s hortl y after 10 a.m, Sunday. S tory By Bob Sanford Photos By Jim Brooks 1 A Mint "400" starting offlcla I directs one of the riders Into pos ilion. The riders left four at a lime, one minute apart . J . N. ROBERTS HANS HANSSON J.N. Talb A'OIf TIle '400'.... "From the s ta rt, you went around a littl e adobe house. It was just kinda rough and dusty. And then thi s l ong straight road was fairly good for the first few mil es. Then the powdered dust. It was really bad. In places, wi th no exaggeratio n it was at l east a foot. It was real squi tt ley , and yo u had to really watc h it. . From the first check to the second it was slow and rocky, real rocky. Then from the second check to the road, it was pretty fast in spots. A nd then you turned 0[[ tha t road, and from then on it was really rough. About half way through the third and fourth check, it real l y got bad. Th at' s what's goint to tea r those cars up ( Dune Buggy that raced Monday & Tuesday). Of course the W hole thing i s bad. You can't rel ax for a hundred feet. Really. You ca n't imagine what's out there . . "It j ust wasn 't much fun. Well , its fun because there 's a lot of money in it. But if 1 were going to go riding, 1 wouldn't ride this thing i n a million years. That's what i t amounts to: It's not fun to ri de, but the money's good. "All in al l that's about it. We'lI end up with $550 a piece. Not a bad day. But we worked, though.' ftaco 250 finds some of the easier going arollld the 50 mile course. 'No fun" was a very on rider descr iption of the hect ic desert ri de.