Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eCROSS COUNTRY AMA Wiseco/Yamaha/Yokohama Grand National Cross Country Series: Round 9 ~ Terry Cunningham (Ill) gra bs the holeshot over winner Scott Plessinger (left). Cunningham faded ba ck to nin th at th e firiish . D~ne Conner bravely rode to th ird and maintained his GNCC po in ts lead. T om Norton claimed the 200cc A class . win by fin ishing fifth overall. Plessingerstillhot at BurrOaks By Davey Coombs "I 24 MILLFIELD, OH, SEPT. 8 'rn j ust trying to be th e spoiler," said T eam KTM 's .Scou Plessinger after wi nning hi s second co nsecu tive Grand National Cross Country series event at the Burr Oaks National. " I' ve thrown away too many fini shes to win the series, so I'm out here to win as many races as I can for my sponsors ." The KTM AmericalKRW Cyclesl MS R a ci n g/Dura lu b e/ Sm ith / T su , baki/Metzelerl Arai/ Dyn oport-backed Plessinger outlasted defending GNCC Champion Scott Summers and current points leader Duan e Conner through three hours of difficult, dusty racing. Plessi nger's KTM teammate Jeff Russell, co-organizer of the JTM Promotions event, was fourth overall, while 200cc A division winner Tom Norton scored fifth in the overall order. Kentucky's Summers accounted for the Open A class win aboard his Bridgestone/Oakley/White Bros.! Bloomington Honda-supported XR600 four-stroke, while Con ner cla imed the top 250cc A class trophy after P lessinger was moved out of the , final class tally as the overa ll victor. Nearly 200 competito rs were on , hand for the Burr Oaks Na tional even t, which was held on a tig ht , eigh t-mi le\ per-lap trail in southeastern Ohio. The event, li ke many o f th e su m me r, suffered due to a lack of rain. In fact, many of Ohio's counties have been declared a disaster area by the governmen t due to recent drought conditions. The dust was prominent th roughout the race, bu t many of the riders felt that it was an exceptional woods racing event. " It was an interesting course," said Conner of the trail. " It was dusty out there bu t there was nothing they could do about that. It was tough going." Conner's appearan ce in the race , came at great risk to hi s personal health, but it might have saved his title hopes. The 23-year-old Kawasaki Team Green pi lot suffered thro ugh a bout of mononucleosis last month and was expected to mi ss several races du e to the illness. "The doc tors told me it would take six to eig ht weeks to get it out my system, and then four to six months for com plete recovery," said Conner. " Bu t 1couldn 't stay o ut of another race because it was killing me not to get out there and try. 1 wasn't going to , lose my points lead without putting up a figh t." With his hard-fourth th ird overall fin ish , Conner maintained a five-point lead, 136-131, over Kawasaki teammat e T erry Cunn ingha m, wh o struggled to n inth in -the 90-degree heat. T u cker- Rock yI Sco t t/ Be 1- Ra y I Dunlop -backed Cunningham garnered the holeshot from the front row o f co m b ined Open /250cc A class rid ers. Plessinger, Conner, Tim Shephard, and ATK's Ed Loja~ rounded out th e first group of cliallengers, though Lojak would be forced out after three laps with mechanical problems. Cunningham held his own throug h the first 24-minu te-Iong lap with Plessinger shadowing him from second pl ace. Summers, who had a poor start after sliding on the inside grass of th e off-cambered first turn, was 15 seconds back in third. Russell and West Virginia 's Doug Blackwell ran fourth and fifth after a lap , but Russell was about to make an unplanned pit stop. " It seems like my front tire alway s goes fla t at the beginning of du sty races," joked Russell after excusing h imself from the early chase to fix a fla t. "I knew my crew wouldn 't be ' read y to change it when I came back , so tha t cost me a lot of tim e. It was a nothe r o ne of my endless tire cha nges." Russell fin al ly re-entered the race 17th overall. Cunningham surrendered the lead to Plessinger with Summers on his tai l on lap two , then Cunningham crashed and dropped all the way back to 13th on the next lap. Meanwhile, the top two bega n to p ut the mselves out of, reach from the rest of the pack as they tried to lead one another in order to avoid getting covered with dust. " I was making a lot of mistakes because I cou ldn ' t see clear ly, but Sco tt (Plessinger) just woul dn't let me by," said Summers. " I kept waiting for a missed sh ift or a bad li ne, but it never happened. He was riding flawless ly." "They forgot that Kevin had zip-tied his air filter on and it was impossib le , to remove quickly," said Fred Bramb lett, Scott Su mmers' mechani c. "They had to take the reta in ing' clasp apart and tha t cost them ab out a minute. But they had to change it because the air filter is more critical on the 250 than it is on a 600 like Scott's bi ke, and the paper one was comp letely clogged." Just after the halfway point of the race, Plessinger and Summers broke from the woods together in a dispute for the lead. Over the ensu ing threeq ua rter-mile grass-track area the two touched bar s together at least three tim es as Summers strove to get th e lead befor e re-entering the tight woods. " I kn ew that if 1 let him by 1 would never be abl e to get him back, " said Pl essinger of th eir brief skirmish. "He actually passed me on th e outside around one sweeper, bu t 1 never let off an d jammed back in front going into the next corner ." Summers' efforts were in vain as Plessinger held his own on the KTM 250. Summers backed off the pace on the next lap and then cruised in second for the rest of the ru n. At the finish line Plessinger was just over a min ute ahead of Summers. . Acerbi sl Ara iiScott/Link/Fah -Q Racing's Tom Norton gathered an early 200cc A class lead and was never serio usly th reate ned on h is way to fifth overall . Series rival Craig Jones suffered a major get-off in front of th e pi ts when he endoed in a rut. Jones' DNF, along with Norton's class win, now gives KT M-mount ed Norton the edge in the year-long battle. "I've got five firsts now, which gives me a decent lead," said Massachusetts' Norton. " I' m in pretty good shape to get the class win, though I'd like to mov e, up higher in th e ove rall standings." Norton is cu rren tly sixth overa ll as the GNCC titl e stretch drive begins. At th e Burr Oaks run Gene Onail was second in the 200cc A class behind Norton as well - as 13th ov erall. Yamaha -mounted Michael Burk placed third in the class, 16th overall. At one point on the third lap, Norton was all the way up to third overall on his 125, but the dust took its toll on the KTM's motor and by the end of the race the '90 Blackwater 100 winner was having difficulty making it up some of the hills. , " It started bl ub bering pretty bad after two hours," said Norton. "I tho ught about changing the air filter but the n though t, ' Nah, it will make , it.' Two mil es into the last lap th e motor started to go and I had to shortshift it the whole time. Squids were passing me; 1 felt like a jerk!" Norton's mechanical woes cost him a chance of denying Conner and Russell their third and fourth place positions. And Conner had bik e problems 'o f his own. "I crashed really hard on the th ird lap and nearly quit," said Conner. " I had just passed Shephard and (Doug) Blackwell, but then crashed down in a gu lly. 1 went over the bars and bent my bike up pretty good. 1 took time to straighten it out and th en rode easy for about a mi le to see if 1 cou ld get my rhythm back. After that I felt okay ." Norton crossed the li ne behind Frank Keega n but still topped the steadi ly im provin g ATK pi lot on elapsed time. Ohio 's Gary Roach picked u p another Four-Stroke A class win after engaging visiting enduro ace Kevin Ben nett in a three-hour duel. The ProVue-equipped Roach bettered Bennett by 54 seconds at the finish, ju st abou t the length of time Bennett lost in the pits. Bennett's unfamiliarity with cross country racing might have cost him the class win. Not used to the no n stop pace, the enduro star's pit crew had installed a paper air filter on the Honda XR250 and la te in the race the New Jersey pilot was forced to stop for an air filter change. . In the SuperSenior class, Yamaha-

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