Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Paul Krause, Cr aig Smith a nd Dave Onda (Kaw) teamed up to win the 1995 Tecate / SCO RE Baja 500, in Ensenada, B.C. , Mexico, o n Ju ne 3. Aboard a Kawasaki 10<500, the trio completed the 385.30-mile race in seven hours, two minutes an d 50 seconds, with an average speed of 54.674 mph. The run.ner-up team of Tim Morton, Steve Hengevel d and Joh n Flores (Kaw) took the checker ed flag approximately 23 minutes behind the winning team. Tim St aab , Ji m Low and Brent Blou n t (Hon) finished third, 12 minut es back of the second-pla ce team. Rex Sta ten , De rrick Paime nt and Joh n Rud der (Kaw ) topped C lass 30 in seventh o ve r all, wh ile D avid Lapraik and Richard Jackson won Class 40 in eigh th overall. The event was marred by the tragic de ath of fiv e-t im e N ational Ha r e & Hound Champion and multi-time Baja 500 and 1000 wi nner Danny Hamel (Kaw) . At high speed , approximately 10 miles into the race, he collided with a car that had suddenly pulled on to the race course and into Hamel's path (se e sidebar) . Ha mel, never regained consciousness was airl if ted to the H o spita l de las Americas in Ensenada, w here he was pronounced dead. He is survived by his parents, Roger and Marcia, and his brother, David. Sp aniard Jordi Ta rr es (G-G) was the winner at the Italian round of the World Championship Trials Series, held June 3-4 in San Gemini, Italy. Home country rider Donato Miglio (G-G) was the runner-u p , while Frenchman Bruno Camozzi rounded out th e top three. Tarres' rival in the cha mpionship chase, Danny Hamel killed in Ba·a 500 T 2 his year's Baja 500 started like any other. Fifty-two motorcycles lined up on the pavement in downtown Ensenada in the gra y light of a hea vily overcast daw n. Dann y Hamel was third in line. The re was light conversa tion, Hamel joked about the color of his new Alpin estars boots and posed thumbs up with local teenagers for pre-race ph otos. He listened to a rad io report from his pit crew abou t water on an early section of the course and commented that he wo uld have to be careful wh en he left the pavemen t. Hamel was his usu al thoughtful self wh en this year' s Baja 500 began - quiet and composed despite the excitemen t all around him, careful to acknowledge everybody wh o said hello - whether he knew them or not. He had his usual air of understated confid ence and looked exactly like what he was - a cap able racer about to go to work at a job he loved and that he d id very , very well . But wh en this year's Baja 500 was over, the sport of off-roa d motorcycle racing - and everyone invo lved with it - was not the same at all. Ham el left th e starti ng line in his usu al bu sinesslike fashion. He rolled on the power gently to avoid spinning or snaking the rear wheel and his front end was down on the pavement all the wa y to the first gentle tum. As he di sappeared from sight, the thought that I might never see him again was 'the furthest thing from my mind. According to one of those closest to Hamel, Kawasaki tea mmate Ted Hunnicutt, who was sched uled to take over the KX500 from Hamel later in the race , Hamel remained in third as he headed out of town. Six or seven miles from the start, at almost exactly the same place where Hamel melted a piston and was forced to retire from 1994's Baja 500, disaster stru ck for the second year in a row. Hamel was racing down Highway 1 near a military base on the ou tskirts of Ensenada. He was running wide open on a lon g straigh taway wh en a car, described by spectators as an unma rked car d riven by a local policeman, suddenly turned across his path. Racing in excess of 100 miles an hour, Hamel reportedly head ed left to try to miss the car, corrected and headed right, then laid the bike down on the pavement and slid into the car. The impact sheered the steeri ng head off the 10<500, which burst into flames on one side of the road, and Ha mel came to rest on the other side. Hamel had just passed Kawasaki Team Green man ager Mark Jo hnson a nd Ron Heb en , a nothe r Kaw asa ki employee, w ho were tim ing the front-ru nners on their way d own the pavement. Johnso n and Heben ran to help the d own ed rider, reaching him in a ma tter of seconds. They radioed for emergency equipment and then admin istered CPR wh ile they waited for assistance to arrive. "Those tw o gave Danny the onl y cha nce he had. If th ey ha d n' t been th ere, he would 've died right the re," said Hunnicutt, who was a few miles up the road w hen the accident occurred. "When I got there and saw the bike I knew it was bad ." Ha mel was transported by ambulance to a local hosp ital but later d ied of massive in ternal inju ries . He never regained consciousness. Marc Colomer (Mon) was fou rth, and now finds himself trailing Tarres by a single point in the championship chase. For the second week in a row, Team Suzuki's Rodney Smith (Suz) scored the overall in the AMA National Championship Reliability Enduros Series. In the third round of the ser ies held in Ida ho City, Idaho, on June 3-4, Smith finished on top of the leaderboard both days . Smith finished ahead of Chris Sm ith (CRE) with 53 second s to spare in the overall standings. Finishing 22 seconds beh ind Smith was Eric Mashbir (Hon), while D avid Rhodes (Kaw) and Scott Mcl.aughlin (Hon) rounded out the top five. Round six of the Grand National Cross Country Series in Elkins, West Virginia, "If a nybo dy co u ld' ve s u r vi ved it would 've been Danny," said Hunnicutt. "He is so big and so stro ng, and so qu ick. lf anybody could've done it, he would've. "You kno w, we a lways knew th at ra cing in Mexico was dangerous . Larry Roeseler has always said that racing Baja was like playing a game of Russian Roulette, but none of us ever expec ted this. We never expec ted anything like this ." At 23, Hamel was at th e peak of his off-road career when th e accide nt occu rred. Just weeks earlier, he had captured his fifth AMA National Championship Hare & Hound title in a row to tie the five-in-a-ro w record set by Dan Smith in 1990. That was Hamel' s short-terril goal. "It feels goo d to tie the record. Now, I'd like to overa ll th e res t of this year's series for a clean sweep an d go on to w in th e series again next yea r to set a new reco rd," he told me in a recent interview. "And my long-term goal is to get nine championshi ps in a row . Dick Burleson set a record wit h eight consecutive Na tiona l End uro titles, and th at 's th e most anybody has ever done in any ama teur series. I'd like to break that record and set a new one - one that will hold for a long time. "If we still have a desert, if they still let us come out here to ride, I'll still be doing the AMA National Ha re & Hou nd Series ano ther four years from now . Just wait and see. " Covering the desert for Cycle N ews for more tha n 10 years, Tom (Anne's husband and photographer...Editor) and I came to know Hamel well. Tom remembers the first time on Ju ne 4, was won by for me r champ Scott Su m mers (Hon), The runner-up was another past GNCC champion Fred Andrews (Yam), while Duane Conner (Yam) finished third . Tom N orton (Yam) finished fourth and Guy Cooper (Suz) completed the top five overall. Da vid Sch ultz defeated Ste ve Johnson to win the NHRA Virginia N ationals Drag Race in Richmond, Virginia, on June 4. Schulz clocked a 7.59-second, 180 mph ru n to defeat Johnson, w ho was competing in his first-ever NHRA final round. Jose Cardoso (Apr) won the 250cc class during round four of the Open Ducado s Road Race Series in Catalunya, Spain, on June 4. Cardoso topped Carles Checa (Hen) and Javier Marsella (Hon) . The we ever saw him. It was about se ven years ago at a National Hare & Hound that ran from Wells, Nevada, to Jackp ot , near N evad a's northern bord er with Idaho. Hamel was under the wing of Dan Smith, wh o introduced the youngs ter to us as somebody to keep an eye on in the future. As Ham el's career blossomed, it was hard to take an eye off him . He rocketed to the top of the desert ranks and stepped right into Dan Smith's Alpinestars when his mentor gave up mo torcycle racing to move in to off-road truc ks. "1 mad e th e move just in tim e. Danny was getting faster and faster," Smith told me in an in terv iew at the end of 1994. "I don 'tthink he ever beat me but he came really close. It was just a matter of time before he got me." Smith, who DNFed a t this year's Baja 500 when he ble w hi s motor near the halfway p oint, sa id he wa s incredibly sad to hear about the accident. "He was the most talented off-road d esert racer ever to swing a leg over a mo torcycle. 1 firmly believe that ," said Smith. "Whenever you go out there racing, you are willing to put all your cards on the table . We do that regu larly bu t I guess our egos are such that we're convinced that it' ll nev er happen to us. That's why we're able to do it so often. But sometimes it does happen. I'm so sorry that it happened to Danny." But there was so much more to Hamel than the hardon-the-gas racer who dominated desert racing and was making inroads into endures. ISDEs and alm ost every other motorcycle genre that caught his interest. Hamel was a consummate public relations presence for Kawasaki. Infinitely patient, he would sign a T-shirt, poster or hat for any kid who asked. I watched him and his father Roger change tires for d ozens of ama teur racers, many of w hom forgot to say p lease or thank you, and even when he lost a race or suffered an extremely rare mechanical problem, it was never the bike's fauIt. Hamel was one of the toughest interviews in the desert be cause he measured eve ry wo rd he ever said to a reporter. He wa s tactful and polite; if a course lacked imagination and was nothing but whoops, Hamel would say that the markings were great. I never heard him raise his voice in the pits, never saw a flash of an ger even in the mo st trying circumstances, a nd never, ev er heard him boast. Even when he won his fif th Na tional Hare & Hound title in a row, the most he would say was a simple, "Yeah, it feels pretty good." Hamel had completed an AA degree in Marketin g at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and hoped that his racing career would some d ay tran sition to a career inside the motorcycle industry. He had recentl y bou ght a brandnew hou se not far from his paren t's hom e in Boulder City and was planning to use his win money from the Baja 500 to help furn ish it. Danny Hamel wi ll be missed as a racer an d as a friend. . His death leaves a gaping hole in the off-road community an d in the hearts of the thousands who were privileged to know him . Those sam e hearts go ou t to his parents, Marcia and Roger, and to longtime girlfriend Becky. Godspeed Danny. And pl ease kn ow that, jus t one more time, I wish I could start a story wi th the words we have all come to kno w so well: "Danny Ham el continued his do mination of the Southw est desert with yet another win this wee kend." A memorial service for Danny Ha mel is sched uled for Thursday, 2:00 p.m., June 8, at the Palm Mortuary, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Anne Van Beveren

• Cover