Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127733
.CROSS·C U TR . O N Y. . . AMA Grand National Championship Cross Country Series Round 6:Forest Festival GNCC (Lett) Sco tt Summers moved Into the GNCC series po ints lead w ith a wi n at the Forest Festival Natio nal. (Below) Fo rmer champ Fred Andrews took the low line en route to a second-pl ace finish. By Davey Coombs Photos by Jim Talkington and C.J. Russe ll f3 §3 ~ 38 EU<1\lS, WV, JUNE 4 eam Ho nda's Scott Summers p ut in a d om ina tin g ride a t th e sixt h round of the Grand National Cross Country to win going away. Th e 28yea r-old four-stro ke legend put the rest of the 23o-rid er field behind him on the firs t lap of the Forest Festival GNCC a nd was never threatened . Summer s won th e muddy m at ch by nearly six minutes over Yamaha teammates Fred Andrews and Duan e Conner. Th e win ma r k ed th e th ird of th e GNCC series for Summers, who also has a runner-up finish and a DNF in the five races he' s compe ted in so far in the '95 se ries . (He skip ped one round due to sched u li ng co nflicts). Summers a lso moved back into lead conten tion in the series points stand ings . Defe nd ing GNCC ch am p io n Scott Plessinger dropped out of the race after one lap after aggravating a neck injury he suffer ed ea rli e r in ' the w eek. Plessinger thus lost the points lead he held for just two weeks to '93 champion Fred Andrew s. Team Su zuki ' s G u y Cooper currently holds d own second. . The Budweiser-sponsored Forest Festival GNCC course measured 10 milesp er -l ap . Rain on th e eve of th e race mad e fo r tack y, so me ti mes mudd y trails. The rain held off th roughou t race day but ominous clouds kep t the rid ers guessing in tire selection un til start time . The slick rocks, tight trees and end less mudholes made for a nasty afte rn oon. The actua l length of th e race was just under thr ee hours. For his efforts Summers received an add itional $250 in prize money from the Budweiser people. After the initial traffic from the start cleared up Summers found him self in fifth position just a couple of miles into th e race. Cooper , Andrew s, Plessinger and National Enduro number one Steve Hatch were among the early leaders that Summ ers fou nd hims elf behind. Early in the lap Summers went to the left in one of the mudholes while the rest of th e field stayed towards the rocky middle. The move paid off in one huge bonus as Summers went right into first place. He led by 30 seconds at the end of the first lap, which lasted a little mo re than 28 minu tes. By the end of the second lap his lead was nearly two full minutes over Tea m Suzuki's Ra nd y Hawkins, who would unfortunately drop out of the race just after the halfway mark after he bust ed a ho le in his RMX' s water p u mp apparatus a nd had to push hi s bike back to the pits. By th e time the race sta rted into its third hour Summers wa s four minutes ahead and still movin g away. Andrews moved into seco nd and held th e position all th e way to th e checke red flag. And Conner would e m er ge fro m a three-way scrap with Norton and Cooper for third-place honors. " It was a great da y other than the fact tha t I made a couple of mistakes on the las t Iapand fell down a coupl e of times," said Summers, who hail s from Petersburg, Kentucky. "I had a pretty good lead at tha t point, so it didn't matte r." What did .rna tter a little to Summers was the em ba rr assing fi rs t lap crash he suffe red right in front of th e scoring barrels while out front by himself. "I know that the score girls get really bored and I thought I would ad d a littl e excitement. Actually it wa s m or e embarrassing th an damaging as far as the race went. At least the MotoWorld gu ys we ren't there to film it." "Th is pa rti cula r track ha s so man y things that can gobble you up," sa id Summers of the difficult EIkins trail. '1 walked the track really well yesterday, d epth -checked all the holes and ruined a good pair of tennis shoes, but it all paid off today because I knew what lines to ta ke while som e of the other gu ys di dn't. It just made my d ay that much easier." "I wanted to get ahead earl y and get away because I didn't want anyone to mooch off my good lines," sai d Sum - - - - - - - - - Continued on page 56 I ,