Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

peans at their own sport, and it's even better because nobody expected it," said Campbell, whose navigation errors relegated him to second overall at last year's event behind two-time winner Alain Olivier of France. "They all thought I would go out and get lost like last year, but I showed them I can do it. This means a lot to me because it's the toughest event of the year, and it's very important for Honda, too." This year's Nevada Rally began with less pomp and ceremony than its 1993 and 1994 counterparts, and the field was almost 20 riders shy of last year's 80plus entries, but the distinctive rally flavor was still there. More than half of the field was from outside the United States and it included racers from France, Italy, Brazil, Japan and Lithuania. The bikes were a weird and wonderful assortment that ranged from a stock Kawasaki KDX200 to Honda's $600,000 EXP-2, an experimental, no-spark-combustion two-stroke, trimmed in titanium and magnesium, that is being developed to meet strict emission standards. Riders' meetings were conducted in English and Italian and ran late into every night. Officials were decked out in distinctive blue-and-yellow overalls, scores of vehicles were plastered with huge Acerbis Adventure decals, and a pair of helicopters circled overhead. "There doesn't exist anything like the Nevada Rally in the United States or around the world," said Italian Davide Trolli, who is living in Southern California to gain desert-racing and enduro experience. "This ride is something incredible. In Europe we don't have the land to do this and when you ride in the United States you've got so much, like good showers in the nighttime, good food, good rider meetings, excellent organization and excelle!1t race course every day. There don't exist anything better than this race right now." Even two-time winner Alain Olivier was on hand to catch the action. '1 break my leg doing a photo shoot for a magazine. It has been two months and 11 days. I think in tw!J weeks I can ride," said the Frenchman. '1 am not happy to not come for ride. This year I have a very good bike - KTM. I think l could (Above) Missile guidance: The sole mesns of navigation Is the roll chart. Trolll broke his In s crash snd hsd to wind the chart by hand for the last 200 miles. (Above) International rally veteran Stephana Peternansel rode his Yamaha to third, the only non-Honda In the top flve overall. (Left),4(t 17 years old, Nick Pearson was the youngest participant In the rally; he rode to sn Impnlutve sixth overall. win." Starting positions were determined the day before the rally officially began with a prologue - a one-at-a-time dash through a motocross-like course laid out in the parking lot of Montgomery Ward, across the str~t from rally headquarters at the Showboat Hotel and Casino. Temperatures in the low 100s plagued the riders as they prepared for the start of the prologue and an unwelcome thundershower rolled in 10 minutes before the start, drenching the riders and turning the paved course into a slick nightmare for the first 10 riders. Campbell, who was first off the line, took a slow-but-sure approach that left him back in 29th overall on adjusted time. Peterhansel showed a little more aggression, which resulted in a 180degree spin-out and 46th position in the starting order, and even the later starters, who tackled the course after the pavement had dried, had their share of mishaps. Utah's Mark Lundgreen went down in a set of small stutter bumps, Jan Pritchard pushed his bike off the course and retired after a run-in with the same bumps, and the Lithuanian entry - Romualdas Beresnevkius - took three times as long as the leader to negotiate the course and finished dead last on adjusted time. The gold bib that marked the rally leader de jour went to former World 125cc Grand Prix Road Racing Champi- on Alex Gramigni of Italy, who was competing in his first rally and whose only prior U.S. riding experience had been at Laguna Seca raceway. Daryl Folks was second and Florent Giusiono would leave the day-one starting line in third. But while the hotshots prepared a bid for victory, others in the pack prepared for the week-long event with other goals in mind. Lundgreen, who broke his hip at the first Nevada Rally and finished 11th overall last year, was back to p,rove that the rally could not get the better of him. Lori Conway, the only female entry in the race, wanted to make it onto the first page of the results after last year's 39th overall left her three places down on page two. And firsttimer Tim Morton turned out so he could be sure he got a chance to try the difficult navigate-while-you-race for- • mat. Day one began at 6 a.ID. with a police escort from the Showboat Hotel to the start of the first srecial test - a 284-miIe dash to the mining town of Tonopah. The course combined everything from rocky mountain passes to silty plains, and complicated instructions in the road book did the rest. A number of the front-runners lost time searching for the course near a small dry lake, and Honda's weeks of preparation started to payoff. "Navigation is what gets you through an event like this, so we really worked on building our navigation skills before we came here," said Honda team .captain Bruce Ogilvie, who was putting the EXP-2 through its paces. "We went out five different times prior to the rally and rode rally courses that we had set up ourselves. They ranged from 130 miles to 200 miles long, and we made them tricky so we had to pay attention to the road book. We wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing." By the end of the first day, Campbell had the time-adjusted lead by three minutes and Trolli was in second. Peterhansel had struggled through the dust from 46th in the starting order to capture third, three minutes behind Trolli, and KTM's Daryl Folks and Edi Orioli rounded out the top five. Lewis brought Honda's brand new XR400R home sixth . overall in its North American race debut to top the 400cc Four-Stroke class. "I had a really good race, considering this is a new bike and it's a little underpowered compared to the big bikes," said Lewis. "1 don't think anybody expected this bike to finish this high overall" Day one also brought its share of problems. Honda's EXP-Z threw up a rock that flattened the exhaust pipe and left Ogilvie struggling to finish 12th. "It would only do about 75 or 80 instead of 95 or 100," Ogilvie explained. "I had to ride very aggressively to catch and pass people in the dust because I didn't have the horsepower to blow by them." The youngest racer in the rally, 17year-old Nick Pearson, lost time trying to sort out the instructions on his roll chart, and the rally's oldest rider, 65plus "Rally Dinosaur" Sam Bass, called it quits for the day after he rapped a recently injured shoulder against a tree. Even a mechanical expert like Scott Summers' mechanic, Fred Bramblett, had a tough time keeping things together. "They closed the final check before I got there because I had some mechanical problems. I didn't have the right tools in my fanny pack, which is kind of embarrassing, but luckily no one knew about it - until now," said Bramblett, who was riding an XR628 mongrel that he built out of Summers' leftover parts. "My last race was about 20 years and 100 pounds ago and I've never ridden in the desert, so I'm just out here to have fun. This is something between a hare and hound and a dual sport ride, except it goes on forever." Rally experts like Zitterkopf, who already had two Nevada rallies under his belt, noticed a big change in this year's event. '1t was much more exciting because the trails were better,\: said Zitterkopf. "There wasn't much of the wide-open stuff tha t we saw the last two years . There were some great first- and second-gear sections where you couldn't go wide open and you had to follow the roll chart really carefully. The terrain made this much more challenging." Day two combined 342 miles of mountains and desert with an unusual section of sand dunes near Silver Peaks and blistering temperatures that caused J:hi'ee-time Paris-Dakar winner Ed Orioli to drop out with dehydration and heat J.t') . 0\ 0\ .....

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