Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

:CROSS COUNTRY'.~. • Round 11: High Point Raceway :AMA Grand.NationalC Country Series . ross Tom Norton (4) leads winner Scott Pless inger (6) and the rest of the Pro class at the start of the Hig h Point GNCC. • essln er DUn Sawa By Davey Coo mbs Mr. MORRIS, PA, OCT. 16 n a race with great implications on ' who will win the 1994 Grand National Cross Country Ch ampionsh ip, Team KTM's Scott Plessing er p ulled away fro m d efen d in g champ io n Fred Andrews to win the High Point GNCC. "I started the race know ing tha t 1 just wanted to keep Andrews in sight all day long." said Plessinge r, who is vying for his first-ever Grand National C r oss Country title, as well as the first ever for KTM. "I knew that beating Fred tod ay 'w o ul d be hard o n h is confidence because this is more of his type of track than what the last race at Brownsville will be like. 1 know 1 can beat him there, so 1 fig ured beating him toda y would wreck his confidence going into the last round ." Andrews needs to w in Brownsville and Plessinger must finish third or worse in order for Andrews to reclaim his title. Roundi ng out the top fiv e overall were Team Green ' s Doug Blackwell, Team Yamaha-Sport Cycles Racing' s Duane Conner, and Team Mirage 's Tom Norton . Scott Summers, the fo rmer three-time GNCC champ, was also in the event b u t dropped out of the running early. He then began helping Plessinger b y meeting him a t various points of interest on the cou rse and waving him ' along. pointing out lines or policing the "'=t' act ions of Andrews. Then, on the last lap, Summers' father Wade, a participant 0'\ 0'\ in the race, tangled with Andrews on the ,....; trail. N " I came up to a place in the back I-< w here it's just one bike wide th ro ugh Cl) these old gnarly trees and rosemary bu shes," expl ained an angry Andrews Cl) after the incid ent. "I came around the :> corner and he was sitting there on his o bike wi th his elbows out. 1 thou gh t, Z 'What' s this guy doing?' and then 1 realized it was Scott Summers' da d . So 1 bumped him in the back end, he puts his I S 14 hands up, so 1 start to go around him . Then he sticks his arms straight out and won't let me by! 1just ran into the side of him to try to go around, but he tried to grab hold of me, an d when he can't do that he shoots his bike into me. 1 had to kick at him to get him away from me. Now I'm draggin g the guy's bike down the trail !" When asked how the incident might have affec ted the outcome of the ra ce, Andrews sai d, "I p robab ly wo u ldn't have beat Scott (Plessinger) anyway; he rode a great race. But 1 wo uld like to know why Scott's dad was ou t there d oing that. Scott was already ahea d of me and he didn't need any help. 1 don't know what that guy was doing." "I saw Scott a couple of times on the trail," said Plessing er of Summers. " I saw him up on the" hill and then down in the ravine. He was trying to get me to go the wa y that Fred was going through the ravine but 1 ne ver did go th at w a y because you had to dr op stra ight down off a bank. 1just figured it was best to go the way 1 had been goin g all d ay. 1 can pick m y o w n lines pretty good. " Plessinger knew nothing about the run in An d rews had w ith Mr . Summers, though he d id mention that he also came upon the stalled Summers at one point on the trail. The High Point course was drastically different from the '93 event. The sno w and sleet of '93 were replaced by bright, sunny skies. And the m udd y hills and creeks were dry and somewhat du sty in th e 75-degree autumn weather. Th e chalky trail, which included parts of the High Point National MX track, measured ap proximately eight miles per lap w ith lap times hovering around the 2D-minute mark. A m aster of the de ad-engin e sta rt, Blackwell, on his Team Green /Answer / FMF-bac ked Kawasaki, flat-tracked his way th rough the grassy first tum with the early lead . However, just a few miles into the race, Pro class debutante Gene Onail worked his wa y into the lead followed by Blackwell and Honda of Troy's Tom Ca rson . At the back of the lead pack were Andrews, Plessinger and Summers, each of whom seemed conten t to let the start traffic settle before making moves towards the front. Halfway through the first lap Andrews put in two fast miles and made the jump from ' six th place to first. He entered the scoring barrels about 10 sec-' onds clear of the rest of the pack. Early co nte nders Ona il and Ca rson were already falling slightly off the pace. Once Andrews ma de his br eak towar ds th e fron t, Plessing er went rig ht after him leavin g the rest of the pack behin d so that they could decide this win between themselves. The oft-injured Scott Summers, a big question mark going into the race, dropped out after the first lap . "I just wasn ' t able to compete, but 1 had to come here to find tha t out," said Summers, who has been trying to recover from the wrist he injured at the ISDE last month. "I didn't want to be silting at hom e thinking th at 1 might have a n oppo rtunity to win this race. 1 came out here to try bu t now there's no do ubt in . my mind that 1 cannot win the championship. My hand just isn't good enough to hold on to my motorcycle. Now 1 think I'm going to tak e th e rest of the . year off and let myself heal up for '95." However, rat her than leave the race en tirely at High Poin t, Summ ers began pl aying a su p po rt role for Plessinger. The six-time GNCC and National Hare Scrambles number-one crisscrossed the woods and fields to cheer and wave on Plessinger, often times pointing outlines to the KTM rider. "If Andrews' pi t cre w can ride around on their pit bikes and point out lines to h im, why can ' t 1 do that for so meone else? " sa id Summers. "Until the series organizers d evelop some kind of rule tha t prevents people from doing things like riding pit bikes to trou ble spots and using radios to call out times and inforrna tion from the trail, Andrews has an advantage over the rest of us. I'm out of the championship, so I'm just try- . ing to even th ings o u t for Plessinger today." N ot that Ple ss inger nee d e d m uch help at H igh Po int, though . He rod e sho tgun to And rews all day long. Even on the motocross track, where many felt Andrews wo uld excel, th e KTM pilo t held his own with th e form er pro motocrosser. "Actually, I've been practicing a lot of motocross lately," said Ple ssi nger. "I built a track by my house and I've been spending more time on that than in the woods . It help s my speed and it gives guys like Andrews and Rodney Smith less of an advantage tha n what they've had in the past. " Further back rode Conner, who has himself been on a hot streak this fall. "I took it easy at the beginning to see how the track wo uld set up," said Conner . "The track is pretty rough and ru tted and 1 just wanted to get through the first laps witho ut any rea l problems . After that, 1 s tarted riding p retty good and ma king up time. But 1 like to use the motocross tank instead of the over size because it han dles a lot belter. Unfortunatel y, 1 lose too much time makin g that extra pit stop. As soon as 1 got into third 1 had to s to p for gas a nd tw o g uys passed me back." After an hou r and a half Plessinger made a play for the lead entering the last mile of the track before the pits . However, Andrews wa s ab le to hol d off Plessi nger as they entered th e fueli ng a r ea and , because thei r stops were un even, opened another l D-second lead before Plessinge r got back on the track. But after Andrews made his own stop on the next lap, his lead cushion was erased all over again. "I just wanted to follow h im for a while," said Plessinger of his early strategy . "It seemed like 1 could hang w ith him but 1 don't think he was pu shing it very ha rd on the first coup le of laps. He seemed to want to go just fast enough to keep me behind him. Once 1 passed him 1just never let up and pushed as hard as 1could . I pulled out about 20 seconds on · him that last lap before my muffler fell off and th e bike started running bad. 1 was just kind of cruising the last couple of miles." While Andrews and Plessinger were still rid ing in tandem, Blackwell began knocking seconds off their lead time and was soon within 15 seconds of the pair . "At first 1was little tight," said Blackwell, who went on to post his best finish of the serie s, "but it wasn 't forearm pump or anything. 1 just couldn't get into the groove. Once 1 gassed 1 got away from Carson and Duane and those guys and just started riding my own race . 1 got w ith in about 15 seconds of them but 1 couldn't get any closer." Had Blackwell sta yed on the gas' he might have caugh t Andrews on the last lap when th e incid en t w ith Su mmers Sr. took p lace approxima tely ha lfw ay through the last lap. When asked abou t what happened on the last lap, Wad e Summers rep lied, "I don't know . 1 don't know w ho it was (tha t ran into him) . 1 go t knocked over .two or three times. I got wate r in my tank . and every time 1hit a bunch of whoops it kills the engine. Back in the woods it died a couple of times and 1 think I held some people up . As a matter of fact Plessinger came up behind me and yelled, so 1 laid

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