Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

OFF~ROAD. . A AG M NCClNationalH areScramble Series · By Davey Coomb s Photos by Jim Talkingto n HURRICANEMILLS, TN, APR. 9 or th e seco nd time in three races Team H onda's Scott Summers em erged as the overall winner in the s ta te of Tennessee after a fierce three-hour-Iong duel at the front of the pack. This time Summers' sparring partner was Team Suzuki's Gu y Co oper. Th e tw o o ff- r oa d superstars s pe n t almost th e en tire race togeth er, al on e out front , wrestling for the lead in front of more than 400 o the r compet itor s in thi s co m bi ne d AMA Gr and N at ional Cro s s Co u n try / Na tio nal H are Scra mbles eve nt. . . "Today was ph ysical, that' s for sure," said Summers, w ho narro wly lost th e GNCC season opene r to Ty Davis las t month and then edged Scott Plessinger tw o weeks ag o in North Carolina. "The course was really rough and chewed up and all of us were reall y going for it. I wanted thi s to be a physical ra ce because I've been really working hard, and I figu red I could outlast everybody else. Guy was in con tro l most of the time, but in the en d I just had everything come my way." "We had so me good battl es going," added Cooper, "right up u ntil th at last lap , really. A lap per kind of messed me up and it really affected me. I was lead ing at th e tim e, but I kn ew that Scott wa s in a little bit better shape than I am . I wanted to control the race and I tried lead ing him through the tight stuff, but when we go t up to the lapper I went left to pass him in the weeds and he came off the trail to the left to let us by . I was l-< just in a b ad spot at the wrong time. P.. Th en Scott just p inned it through the rest of the tight section, kn owing that if he could get away from me I wouldn't be able to ge t him back in the last three F ..... - -< 14 Round s3/2:L orettaLynn's Ranch miles of the lap, which was fast er and where I was more comfortable." Team SCR Yamaha' s Tom Nor to n fini shed third overall with defending GNCC champ Scott Plessin ger finishing fourth. National Hare Scrambles Champion Rodney Smith rounded out the top five aboard his Suzuki. . Annually one of the biggest off-road rac es ofthe season, the Lor etta Lynn's Ranch race offers poin ts in both th e GNCC and National H are Scr ambl es Seri es. More than 400 rid er s made the trek to Mrs. Lynn's central Tennessee r anch and ca m pg ro u n d wh e re th ey were gree ted by a rou gh lO-mile-long trail . The cen terpiece of the course was a grassy special test area, wh ich offered the spectators an extended chance to watch Summers try to minimize Coo per's motocross skills each lap . The rest of the cou rse was hilly, rocky and, in the early going. eve n a little dusty. The leader at the end of the first lap wa s Hatch, who had a su rp rising cushion' of 13 second s on Cooper, wh o fell twice on the first loop. Summers, Norton and Suzuki's Randy Hawkins followed. "I kn ew the re w a s a g oo d battle going on up there because stu ff was flying p ret ty good," said N orton of the lead ers' duel. "C ooper fell twice right off the sta rt. I mean, we didn' t go two mil es and Guy was on his head twice. But he got back up an d went rig ht by me . I thought to myself, 'I'm no t even going to try.' The first half-lap in a race like this everything is going to be crazy because no on e wants to ride in the back where all the dust is. Peopl e wer e just cartwheeling everywher e be cau se the y can't see the holes in the gr ound or the roots or anything." Hatch dropped back to third on the next lap, as Summers and Coope r began their duel and took the race away from everyone else early on. Norton diced with Hatch and early crash victim Plessinger for nearly two hours before easing away w it h th ird . However, the focu s of the spec tators remained on the two leaders. Rarely out of sight of one another, Cooper and Summers' epic duel kep t the spectators entertained all day long. "Scott and I both wanted to be in the lead quite a bit because of tlle dust," explained Cooper of their furious rush to the front. "We p as sed quite a few time s in th e tr a il s because we b o th wanted to con trol the race." "Guy was in control because he would pass me in the fast, dusty sections and I cou ld n' t see around him," added Summers. "Then when we would get to a section that was really tight and he wasn 't going as fast as I was, but I couldn' t pass because there was no place to pass. That was allowing him to rest a little bit , so there was a lot of stra tegy going on ou t there . It was a thinkin g game." " O n e more thing about Coo p er, " conti nued Summers. "He's got finesse on a bike . He can stand on the foo tpe gs an d do things on a bik e that I literally cannot do." One of the mos t imp ressive passes of th e day occurred righ t in front of the special tes t area just befor e the w h ite flag ca me out. Su m me rs , h olding the lead , took the high inside line aro und a righ t-ha nded off-c am ber turn. Coope r came in even higher, somehow makin g the co rne r b e t w een Summers ' big Ho n da an d th e massive oa k tr ee th at mark ed the inside boundary . "I had walked th e tra ck yes te rday and saw that I could go down low and square off the comer coming back up," said Cooper of his strategy. "There was a rut developing and I figured that the next lap I would div e down low and try t ha t line . When we broke from the woods I was right behind Scott and I think he tho ught I was going to the outside. He hesitated just a little and made a m is take by giving me room on th e inside. I jum ped insid e of him and jus t nudged him out a little. It wasn 't a hard hit or any thi ng." " It w as n't that b ig of a d eal," sa id Summers of the pass. "We had a lap to go - 13 miles - before the race was over with and we were both ki nd of conservi ng ene rgy and wa iting until it really mattered. That was a good move he made because I was expecting him to go down to the bottom - that's what he had been doing all da y. I just did a no-brainer and left it wide open for him to edge me ou t." "I fell a few times today but not anything that cost me a lot of time , so tha t helped me improve from fifth or sixth lik e I go t in the firs t tw o races, " sa id Coop er of his impro vement. "This tra ck sui ted me a little bit more because there w as mor e open stuff. In the tigh t stuff so me of m y teamma tes an d Scott and those gu ys are a little faster than me, so today I didn' t give too many seconds away." "I go t a break that last lap when the lapper slowed down Guy a little bit ," said Summers of the white-flag lap . "As soon as I got around them I just took it up another notch and I think he got a little bit tired. Back when that lap started I just growled, gra bbed th e handlebars and said, 'Okay, I'm going to go blow or put a hole in the fence!'" "I fina lly had a good day," said Norto n, who now holds third in the point standings. "I've been ge tting really good starts wi th the Yama ha, so from the very beginning I was up there fighting. I got really hot th e fir st lap because of th e heat and the dust. I started thinking that I was going to drink my w hole (water) bottle d own in the first hour. I knew I had to gas after tw o lap s, so I figured I would get a wh o le bunch of water dumped on me, so I just hung on until then. After that I just stayed pretty consistent. I don't think I dropped back too much from that point on." Norton ended up finishing abou t five minutes behind Summers and Cooper for his best score so -far in the still-young season. Ples singer checked in another tw o minu tes back on his number-on e KTM, while Smith was ano ther 30 seconds back. Smit h in tum held a lead of just six seconds on his teammate Hatch. Seventh overall was Eric Mashbir of California, whi le Missouri's Steve Leivan notched eighth aboard a Yamaha. "Scott Plessing er did a great job coming back," said Cooper of his rival, who coinp leted the first lap of the race outside the top 15 after crashing hard . "I saw him crash ri ght off th e bat o n this gnarly downhill. The bike kept going and he was just ca r twheeling al ongsid e it. I tho ugh t h e was goi ng to be out of the race. For him to ge t back up and finish fou rth was quite a good ride for him." Plessinge r's fine e ffo r t le ft h im so drained after the race that he skipped the awards presentation and champagne ceremony for.the top five overall finishers . Tw o for mer Na t io nal cham p io ns failed to fmish at Loretta Lynn's. The '93 GNCC Ch ampion Fred An d rews first bent the front brake rotor on h is Yama h a when he landed on Norton during the e a rly traffic snarl. Andrew s sw apped wh eels but later picked up a front tir e puncture after climbing back up into the top five. On his way back to th e pits Andrews sp o tt ed multi-time enduro ch am p ion Ra ndy Hawkins of Te am Suzuki stranded alongside the trail with an em p ty gas tank. Having already abandoned the race, Andrews shared his fuel with Hawkins an d the two rode back to the pits together. Yamaha-moun ted Do ug Blackwell and Duane Conner also failed to comp lete all six laps, as d id H ond a of

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