Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

""fr ~. ,. - ,.......,~'\, -.or:~ '~-." L ~., 1"" . . . !l." . g< 0'> """" 0\ N I-< Il) "S Il) > o z 8 - .OFF.-ROAD . La Paz, Baja California FordFI'ecate SCORE:Baja'1000 ~ thing. We also had a 'Critical Air' plane - a full medical plane with a nurse in the back with a trauma pack - waiting for us wherever we went. We don't want anything to happen down here." Honda also had a helicopter in the air and more than 20 light planes supported competitors in the four-wheeled classes, which ensured long lines for fuel at the airport in San Felipe. The advantage of air support was lost as the sun began to set and, thanks to the delay at the start, darkness caught many of the racers off guard. . "It got dark about 200 miles sooner than we'd expected," said Hunnicutt, who dashe9, through San Ignacio at 5:30 p.m., "plus things were taking a bit longer than we'd expected. I had to do something to the bike at every pit except one. I broke one set of lights and we had to replace the pipe. It turned out to be a really long day." But it was becoming an even longer day for the racers behind him. Campbell had put in an 11-1/2-hour ride by the time he finished his 680-mile section at San Ignacio and handed over to Lewis for the second half of the race. The Honda had perked up aft~r getting oil and a new air filter near the 4oo-mile mark, but it still wasn't out of the woods. "It was' running better but we never really knew what was wrong with it, so we couldn't be sure it wouldn't happen again," said Campbell. "I was about 15 minutes down pretty much all the way here. I would gain a couple of minutes in one section and lose a couple in another." The on-again, off-again rain that had kept Baja damp almost all week changed from a dust-laying blessing in the upper sections of the course to a tremendous hassle near the halfway point. . "The course was completely under water for 50 yards at a time around EI Areo," said Morris. "We had to make some detours around it to get through." The Morris/Ondas/Smith KX500 team had a firm grip on third overall at San Ignacio, an hour behind the leaders on corrected time, and the KX500 team headed by Jeff Sheets cleared the pit an hour and a half behind the front-runners in fourth. "I think we've got the widest age spread in the field," said Keith O'Neal. ''I'm 26, (Sheets) is 35, we've got Chuck Dempsey and Rob Mesecher, and we go all the way through to my father aim O'Neal). I think he's 48. We just tried to stay consistent all day. We knew we couldn't beat the factory guys." Honda's number-two entry was running fifth, almost side by side with Tim Morton's KX250, which had stretched out an hour's lead on its nearest Class 21 rival. The Miller/Ostbo/Bringle trio had Honda's EXP more than an hour ahead in Class 30 as it passed the halfway point, and Chris Haines' team was half an hour ahead of DeGaine's Kawasaki in Class 40, with the' Rutten team determinedly hanging on to third. Marc Burnett, Joey Lane and Billy McClintock had an eight-hour lead in the 125cc division and Jim Moore was racing at the head of the Class 50 pack, more than eight hours behind the overall leaders. Darkness brought a whole new set 'of. challenges. "I smelled all this hot wiring and the lights started to go out - one light at a time," said Morris, who lost his lights the minute he left San Ignacio. "When the last one finally burned out, I was about three miles from my pit. I got out Class 30 winners Chuck Miller, Paul Ostbo and Greg Bringle rode Honda's high-tech EXP2 to a twohour margin of victory In their class. a flashlight and held that .with one hand and held the handlebars with the other ",hile I was bouncing through the rocks,J1 Trolli, who took over the numbertwo Honda from Capt and Ogilvie at La Purisima, fought lighting problems all the way to the finish. "I lost the pencil after 100 miles, then about 65 miles before the end, I lose the other one, too. The bolts were not tight and it was lying down," said Trolli, who made several attempts to fix his lights. "A local guy gave me some wire, then I find another local guy who gave me a bungee cord." The KX500 team of Chris Eberz, Ian Smith, Don Franklin and Tom McAllister completely lost their lights almost as soon as darkness fell and were forced to .race with only a tiny backup light. The . Over 40 team of David LaPraik, Richard Jackson, Rick Shirey, Buddy Baker and Mark Forrest lost their lights twice and eventually had to enlist the help of a trophy-truck pit crew to weld them back in place, and Pete Sheehan's lights went out when the ignition on the KX500 he shared with Clint Stacklie, Steve Edlefsen and Mike Pallett started to fail. "I had enough power to drive 40 watts and I had a 55-watt light. We had to ride over five grand all the time or we didn't have any lights, so we had a hell of a time:' said Sheehan. "We kept overshooting turns. I was just hoping the sun would come up so I could see." And darkness wasn't the only challenge the riders faced. "I almost hit a couple of cows going down the highway in San Ignacio. They were right on the course," said Morris. "It's a little scary going 110 and having cows come out in front of you." Then the rain started to fall. Krause was damp from the minute he took over the lead bike in La Purisima and stayed that way nearly all the way to the finish 300 miles later. Fifteen minutes back, in second at La Purisima, Lewis was determined to use the rain to his advantage. "I love it when it's miserable," said Lewis. "The worse the conditions, the better I ride relative to everybody else the better I ride, period. I get more excited." Lewis pushed hard as the course continued south past Loreto, across Highway 1 near Ciudad Insurgentes and on to the Highway 22 crossing near Ciudad Constitucion. "This is the first time I've ridden to La Paz and, when I volunteered to do the lower part of the course,- they didn't tell me there were 80 miles of sand whoops just south of Constitucion," said Lewis, with a grin. "The.whoops kind of suck you in. They get bigger and deeper and bigger and deeper." And then there was the mountain section. "I was boping it would rain more in the mountains but it was dry basically the whole way through there," said Lewis, who stayed 15 to 20 minutes behind the lead bike no matter how hard he rode. "I could see where (Krause's) lines went. He rode really good." Back in third, Craig Smith, who had taken over the Morris/Ondas KX500 for the sprint to the finish, missed most of the rain but he still had to deal wi th its aftermath. "There were some big water pools that weren't there when I was pre-running," said Smith. "The water was like a foot deep coming into Highway 22. I saw it coming and took off on some CM tracks that looked like they wen t around it. I started sinking in the mud, so I came out of the bushes when I thought I was past the water and jumped back onto the road - right into foot-deep water. I had water going over my head and I couldn't see where I was going." Despite an almost full moon, the thick cover of rain clouds made the night pitch black as the racers cleared Santa Rita, just past the l,OOO-mile mark, and entered the final stretch to La Paz. Brian Schmuckle, who was scheduled to ride the third quarter of the race for the top-running Mexican team, put in some unexpected miles that took him through Santa Rita and on to within 20 miles of the finish. "When I got-to the end of my section, nobody was there to take over. My partner had taken a wrong turn and was way further down the course," said Schmuckle. "I thought I was going to make it all the way to the finish bu t when I finally reached them, they kicked me off the bike. The secret to a good race down here is lobster burritos they're great brain food." Jason Ingersoll, who shared a Honda XR400R with Elizaburo Karasawa and Erik Mattson dashed past the Sheets/ O'Neal/O'Neal/Dempsey /Mesecher Kawasaki in the whoops just before Santa Rita, and Bob Rutten, who had taken over the Class 40 lead when Chris Haines' bike failed to reach checkpoint seven near Loreto, did a face-plant in the thick silt just below Santa Rita. "It's really bad silt down there so I was going slow with my feet down making sure I didn't fall," said Rutten. "I hit a deep rut and went down head first." With the silty section behind them, the racers faced the excitement of the mini-summit, where Ken Burris, who was riding cleanup for the Tex Mitchell/Chris Steward/Ron Mitchell/ Kip Busse Class 22 XR600 team, got a bloody nose when he fell in a hole, and then the finish line was almost in sight. Krause put in a trouble-free ride until the lights of La Paz were just over the horizon and his IS-minute lead was still intact as he reached the home stretch. But with the race almost in the bag, he careened off the course just 15 miles from the checkered flag. "I overshot a comer and went into a big rain rut. I landed in it, got stuck in a bush and had to bench press the bike out," said Krause. "It tweaked the front of the bike pretty good. The lights weren't in front of me anymore, so I' couldn't see anything the rest of the way. It was just a bad deal late in the race." Krause lost precious seconds hauling the bike back onto the course, then continued the final dash down the wet pavement. The highway near La Paz was lined with spectators despite the early-morning hour, and they cheered Krause on all the way to the finish. With his aTms extended straight up over his head, the Kawasaki racer took the checkered flag just before 2 a.m. The three-man team completed the 1,146mile course in 19 hours and 31 minutes with an average speed of 58.72 mph. "Things went pretty well the whole way," said Krause "We changed (light) bulbs two or three times and changed the whole set up at pit 23, but that was about it. I thought it was really a good race course and the spectators were really good as far as not building any jumps for US." The win represented a last hurrah for Hunnicutt, who has dropped Mexico from his 1996 race plans, and it could even turn out to be the last hurrah for Kawasaki in Mexico. "Will we do it again? I don't know as of today - I don't know what we will do," said Mark Johnson. "We had a pretty good day. The guys kept the bike going forward and kept it on two wheels until the last 10 miles. All in all, we had a pretty smooth day - one of the smoothest I can remember for a long time. We will go back and evaluate thing?, and make decisions from there." Lewis brought the XR628 he shared with Campbell across the finish just eight minutes behind the winning Kawasaki despite earlier engine problems, and claimed second overall with an average speed of 58.32 mph. Lewis was anything but h.appy with second. "You know what they say. Second ain't s--," said Lewis. "It will probably sink in later but for now, it would've been much better to win." Despite his disappointment, Lewis admitted that he enjoyed his first ride to LaPaz. "The length of the race is good bu t it's too dangerous," said Lewis. "The most dangerous thing is cows. You're basically going down tunnels where the

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