Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Dan Smith ducks under a railroad crossing on his four-stroke Husky. The defending Ha!e & Hound Champion finish8d second overall. AlIA Natonal Cba.pionship Bare II Bound Series: Round 4 Krause takes Los Coyotes victory By Anne and Tom Van Beveren Photos by Tom Van Beveren PLASTER CITY, CA, APR 26 Honda rider Paul Krause continued his current hot streak Sunday, as he powered his CR500 across the finish line just 30 seconds ahead of 1986 National Champion Dan Smith, stealing his second win in a row from the Team Husqvarna ace at the Dunlop Tires-sponsored Los Coyotes , event. '. Krause rocketed mto the ~ead at the start and never looked back: makmg another s~ccessful, all-?ut bI.d for ~h~ 1987 Nauona~ ChampIOnship. WI~ speeds averag10g close to 60 mph 10 m~y sections of the course, th.e pnY';lteer from. Laguna Bea~, CaIIforma, kept hIS Hc,mda ou.t 10 ~ont of the pack for a wue-to-wue wm. The race was held in Plaster City (near EI Centro), California. Laid out by the Taqkslappers M.C., the course consisted of three loops, each approximately 30-rniles long. The flat-out course provided a complete chan~e of pace from the tight, rocky terram the championship riders encountered last week in Las Vegas. "Th t f tf " e ~ourse was way ~ as or me, Said Tea~ H~nda s R~ndy Morales, who seIZed hIS CR500 10 a sand wash about halfwa~ through thef~st loop. "It's flat and sandy and you Just go as fast as you can out there," said Morales. "It's a 9O-rnile race and it'll be over in just two hours. That's not a desert race - it's a road race with sand and whoops." The ~a~t-paced te.rrain wasn't the only difficulty faang racers. The temperature was over 80° when the banner dropped for the 9 a.m. start and then climbed into the high 90s during the race. Krause grabbed the holeshot ahead of series point leader Smith by four seconds when the front runners ducked under the railway bridge and started into the 30-mile first loop. A fast start by local Vet racer Mike Ruhstorfer put him in third overall as the field completed the bomb run with fellow Vets Paul Bennett from Phoenix, Arizona, and southern Californian's Wayne Carlton hard on his heels. The first 25Oc~ into the course was a Y~ah!1 pIloted by Rheynard Morgan 10 fifth overall. Krause, SmIt.h and Morales, w.ho moved up .rapld!y after'a sluggI~h start, were Just bIke lengths apart 10 the early runnirIg, racing handlebarto-handlebar in the fast washes and sandy terrain of loop one. The comefrom-behind bid from Morales didn't last long. The Honda hopeful seized his engine and was forced to retire. K!ause pulled out all the stops in the second half of the loop, running Privateer CR500R Honda rider. Paul Krause. captured his second overall victory of the season. this time beating Smith by 22 seconds. wide open and stretching his lead to. almost two and a half minutes by the time he came in for a quick.pit stop. He finished the 30-mile loop in 30 minutes. Honda pilot Steve Walker, who carries the Open class number two plate in Southern California's AMAI District 38, came on strong late in the loop to capture third overall going irIto the pits, just ahead of District 37 YZ250 hotshot Mike Baker. Local riders Tom Moen, on a KTM, and Honda-mounted Mark Vanscourt, were close behind. Bennett was still out in front of the Over-30 division in eighth overall, and the first I 25cc finishing loop one was a Honda piloted by Bruce Taylor. Krause was on the gas as the race headed irIto loop two, a 31-mile section that combined rocky washes, canyons and pummeling crossgrain, to make up the most technical of the three loops. "They do the best with what they've got down here," said Krause, "but they don't have a lot to work with. It's choppy, junky and just way too high speed." "It's worse than whatever Paul (Krause) said," commented Smith. "There isn't any good terrain down here at all. It'll be sixth gear stuff and you'll be going really fast and all of a sudden. there'll be some stadium hoops. It's so unpredictable and you have to hold back the whole way because of that. You just can't go as fast as you want out here." Despite holding back for safety's sake, Krause completed the 31-mile technical loop in 42 minutes, with Smith making up time to come in just one and a half minutes behirId. Walker was still in third, and Baker was holding onto fourth despite some exciting moments half way around loop two. "On the second loop, I thought my race was over," Baker said. "I was in a real tight wash and the bike just locked up. I thought the whole thing had gone, but after poking around for a minute or two I found a rock had got stuck in the countershaft sprocket. Once I got rid of that, everything was okay again." Baker was followed into loop three by Moen, Vanscourt and Morgan, with Open Amateur racer Craig laveIJi, aboard a Honda, powering past Bennett to take over eighth. Taylor was still out in front of the 125cc division in 10th overall, with the nearest C-class competition coming from Yamaha-mounted Wes Enz back in 19th overall. Just over a minute ahead of Smith, Krause was wasting no time as the third and final loop got underway. The Honaa pilot was pushing his bike to the limit in the fast, sandy terrain when his trouble-free ride came to an end. "The bike started rnissirIg all of a sudden and it just wouldn't pull any more," .Krause said. "I hiid about 10 miles to go and it was burbling all the way in. I was worried that Dan (Smith) would catch me so I stayed on it as much as I could and then I started catching up to someone's dust. I didn't know what was going on. No one had passed me but there was dust OUt in front." Krause kept pushing his fading Honda right to the finish line, taking the checkered flag just half a minute in front of Smith, but came in over a minute behind District 38's Steve Walker, who had been two minutes back, in third overall, as the final loop began: A quick glance at Walker's tank card showed that he had missed one of the checks late in the race, which relegated him to the middle of the pack and restored Krause's number one spot. "I was wondering how he got up there," said Krause, who thanked his sponsors Escondido Honda, Metzler, Hallman, Neal Enterprise, Spectro, IMS, Shoei, Renthall, Scott and F8cL Racing Fuels. "I got the lead right off the start and no one passed me the whole race, so I couldn't work out how he was in front of me," Krause said. "As far as the course went, they didn't have much in the way of rnarkin~s. I got lost three times, but the malO problem was with the danger markings. They mark the dangers for slow speeds and when you're going as fast as we do they come up a lot quicker than you expect. The worst part of the race was holding the speed. It's hard to go that fast for that long." Krause's wirI, combined with a

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