Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

,HAR E&·H U O . · . . . Round 5: Hungry Valley ORV Area Q N -·:··: '. AMA National Championship Hare &Hound Series.' and required a dead-en gine refuel, but Hame l was still out of the pits in no time. And he had disappeared into the second 4O-mile loop before Staten could be heard coming down the was h. Staten cleared loop one 's final check tw o and a hal f minutes behind Ha mel and just 30 seconds ahead of third -placed Richardson , who wa s well in the hunt despite taking a cautious approach'in the dusty opening section. "I was probably fourt h or fifth at the bomb and I drop ped back a little bit to get out of the dust, so it wasn't too bad. See - I'm perfectly clean," said Richardson. . Richardson's third overall turned into second alm ost as soon as he left the pit thanks to Staten missing an arro w. Fourth overall at the halfway point was heralded b y th e he al th y ro a r of Campbe ll' s thumper, a minu te behin d Richardson. Zitterkop f broug h t the first 250cc en try into the pit in fifth and Davis, who had to bum gas to finish the loop, struggled into the pit in six th an d too k time out to ch a nge th e broken m uffl er th at h a d caused all his pro blems. "I was so far back that I just went out to have fun after that," said Davis. "There wa s no way I co u ld cat ch up so I just relaxed and had a good time riding." By Anne Van Severen RENO, NY, OCT. 2 h en th e fif th round g ot underway, every thi ng wa s n ew. The national contenders faced a new course laid out by a new sponsoring club in a new rid ing area . But by the time the checkered flag fell, everything was back to normal . Danny Hamel was out in front of the pack yet again, turning a National Ha re and Ho und into his own brand of race - a "Hamel and hound," for the fourth time this year. The Kawasaki hotshot took the win by two and a half minutes and , with only 16 points between him and the overall series win, and two races still to go, Hamel looks like a shoe-in to take his fourth title straight. "I didn't get the start I wanted - I was third at the bomb, and I really got dusted out, but I got the lead about the 25-mile m a rk and every th ing was great af ter that," said Hamel, who is cauti ously op timistic abou t his chan ces for another series victo ry . "It h asn ' t been as easy as last year," said Hamel, who topped all seven 'rou n d s of competitio n in 1993 . "I still have to finish the next one to get the win , but it looks pretty good." The Team No Sni vel ers-sponsored even t took the racers to the Hungry Valley ORV area, 20 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, and laying out an 8O-mile course within the confines of the ID-mile by 24mile rid ing area took some careful planning. "They'll have to ride a lot more wi th their brain than normal," said Race Coord inato r Ra y Neill. ''' Th e loops come tog ether and th ey'll ha ve to be abl e to read ribbon ." The club use d p in k ribbon to d esigna te loop one and oran ge ribbon for loop two . Cours e w orkers a lso u s ed 1200 arrows - more than some racers see in a year of desert competition . "I usually have a hard time riding ribbon on virgin trails but the course was so well marked that even I could follow it," said Kawasaki-backed Ty Davis. "Every danger was marked, too. You could pin it right up to the Day-Glo because they had everything marked SO well." With a turnout of 298 rid ers ~ double anything the club has ever seen at one of its local races, sign-up took longer than .usual. Members of two California clubs stepped in to help, and the music of ZZ Top, blasting over the PA system, ushered the riders to the starting line half an hour late at 9:30 a.m. _ Most of the racers had spent the early morning hours prerunning the upper section of the bomb run but, with BLM restrictions putting the lower part off limits until the race began, selecting a starting spot was a hit-or-miss affair. It was advantage Davis as the expert wave thundered up the valley, passed the pits and then turned off to the right to w ind th rou gh a section of im p ressive ~ 0\ rock form ations that rose as high as 20 0\ feet straight up off the desert floor . The ,....; spectators appreciated the start's unusual 0\ layout because it let them see Davis at his ,....; fastest, with Over-3D hotshot Rex Staten I-< Q) right on his heels in second, and prerace favorite Hamel pushing hard in third, instead of the cloud of dust on the horiu zon that the spectators see at most desert races. "Nothing really went wrong on the start. I just didn't get a good jump off the . W :8 o 16 lin e," said H amel. "I got stuck behind (State n). He was clu tching it over every rise and just roosting me." Davis, who wen t into the round wi th more points than Hamel, was enjoying a rare ride in clear air. "Being out in fron t was awesome. It was the bes t feeling ever. I' m ou t there thi nking; 'Finally, I beat Danny off the line. Finally, I'm leading/" said Davis. Despite thick dust that hung almost mo tionless on the still mo rning air, Hamel moved up to challenge Staten and was soon gunning his Kawasaki KXSOO past the ex-motocrosser to take over second . " It was pretty ha irball ge tti ng by him in the dust, but I managed it," said Hamel. Davis was excited to finally be in front, but then his KX500 started to run rich. "I thought it was the altitude at first, but it got worse. It wouldn't even run if I backed off. Then I thought that I'd whiskered a plug," said Dav is . " I still couldn't see (Hamel), so I stopped to change the plug and all of a sudden, there he was." Hamel pulled over to check that his Kawasaki teammate was all right, then pinned it, leaving Davis by the side of the trail. To add insult to injury, changing the plug made no improvement to Davis' ailing-KXSOO, which ran fine for about a mile before again running rich. He even ran out of fuel near the end of the loop. Out in front, Hamel was making almost as much time as Davis was losing. He powered through the high-speed sections and bounded through th e deep . whoops, drawing further awa y from the rest of the field with each passing mile. With Davis forced to nurse his bike through the second half of the 40-mile loop, Staten inherited second overall and Honda CR250 privateer Dan Richardson took over th ird. KTM hotshot Destry Abbott, who got a flying start in the 250cc Expert class, had his hopes of victory (Above) Danny Hamel wo n again . This time it was his fourth victory of the season , and he could very well clinch the series title at the next round in California. (Right) Dan Richardson finished second overall. dashed when he hit the ground hard near the 2D-mile mark. The crash let KTM-rival Greg Zitterkopf power through to take the 250cc division lead and Abbott's bike began running too poorly to allow him to take the lead back . Aron Huntington bit the dust when he was running third in the 250cc division, reinjuring his femur and calling it quits. Jason Kawell was making up time after a slower than usual start, but his Kawasaki KX2S0's top speed w as nothing compared to the pace set by Johnny Campbell, who ate up the fast sections on his .facto ry -b acked Honda XR600. Husky four-stroke pilot Brandon Gerber matched Campbell's speed until he had to stop to change a plug, and one shot of bad luck after another left Mark Lundgreen unable to match anybody's speed. Hamel was still running trouble-free when he snaked down the tight wash at the end of loop one and entered the pits, which were laid out in a small circle and bordered by snow fence to keep the racers headed in a counter-clockwise direction. BLM rules kept pit speeds to 5 mph Loop two began with another plus for th e spectato rs - a tria ls -li ke se ction through the moon rock forma tions just north of the pits. "I didn't really care for th e fi rs t loo p - it w a s too fas t and whooped out, but the second loop was really neat ," said Scott Morris, whose bad start left him 16th at the end of loop one. "It was pretty challenging and it had a lot of tight, technical downhills. I started to do pretty well there ." Right behind Morris, and hard on his heels as he started to leapfrog up through the pack, was S enior Class leader Bill Maxim, who used to live nearby. Maxim felt that the dust minimized his advantage of knowing the terrain, and other Vet Expert Ron Bragdon agreed. "It was really dusty back where I was," said Bragdon. "I had a little allergy attack because of all the dust - it reall y cramped my body up ." But Gary Dudley insisted on looking on the bright side. "The dust wasn't nearly as bad as I expected - especially in the canyons," said Dudley. "It rained a few days before the race - in the middle of last

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