Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Hare Scrambles National Champion Scott Summers No one has better promoted fourstrokes in ott-roed racing than Scott Summers. (Below) Always the Innovator: In an etlort to keep his alreadyheavy motorcycle from getting any heavier, Summers, this year, successfully mounted a foam disc In his XR's front wheel to keep mud from packing up on the rim. 68 there's only a one-point increment between first and second, so there's better opportunity for the points to be close at the end of the year than in the hare scrambles series, where there's a five-point difference between first and second. But either way, second is second, regardless of how close the points are. How badly did you want this title? Badly. [ would have been sick all winter long had I not won this title. [ would not have had a chance at another title until the end of next year, and that's a long time to wait. You compare-d the National Hare Scrambles Series and GNCC series. The Cross Country Series seems to be growing, but the National Hare Scrambles Series is not. What are some of the things that need changing in the Hare Scrambles series to build its prestige back up to where it once was? One of the problems with the National Hare Scrambles Series is that different clubs put on each event, and everyone has a little different interpretation on how a hare scrambles should be run, and that just opens the door for controversy. One company does the G CC Series and that just makes it so much more professional.. They have an announcer that draws the spectators in, and they draw more riders, which in turn draws more press. It's for that reason that we've decided not to compete in the National Hare Scrambles Series in 1996. We're just going to focus on the Cross Country Series once I get my contract figured out with Honda, so I'm not real sure... ... Wait a minute - you don't have a contract with Honda for 1996? Not yet. So anyone who's reading this and has a motorcycle company with a big budget can call you? Well, we're already on the phone talking to people. Would you consider riding a twostroke if the right deal came along? If the right deal came along, sure, I would consider it, but [ would prefer to ride a fourstroke. Back to the series. Would a traveling AMA official, a sort of commissioner, help the National Hare Scrambles Series? I think that would go a long way towards helping that series. I think that having announcing would b.e real important, too. And having tracks where the spectators could see more, kind of like a shamrock design where you go out and come back, go out and come back. The more opportunities that the public has to see an event, the more times they will want to comeback. How do you feel about mixing in small motocross sections? I think that's great. It gives people something to watch and I think it's popular with the racers as well. Speaking of motocross, the sport has all these former motocrossers out there now. Do they have an advantage over classic woods riders like you and Plessinger on these sections? There's places where a motocross rider has an advantage but there are just as many times where a course requires skills and experience a motocrosser probably doesn't have, like in tight woods and on slippery, off-camber stuff that requires a lot of finesse. Also, the length of these races works against a motocrosser because it's harder to ride fast for that long. I mean, a lot of guys can go fast for an hour, some can go fast for two, but not a lot of guys can go really fast for three hours. I think that's one of the problems Guy Cooper has had in off-road racing. He's extremely fast, but he doesn't seem to have the ability to go fast for a long period of time. I think that concentration has a lot to do with it. In a 30-minute moto, that's not a long time to be thinking about everyth.ing. There's not a lot of time there for something to go wrong. In three hoars, though, there's a lot of things that can wrong. You can break your bike, you' can break yourself. There's just so many more variables that have to be factored in when you're riding for that amount of time. And your playing field is a lot larger, too, isn't it? It's a lot harder 10 memorize a 10-mile woods course than it is a motocross course. I think that's important, too. That's one of the things that keeps these guys from going too fast, not having knowledge of the course. Studying the course harder is one of the things that I've really been working on lately. I've tried promote your own image and that of the sport in general I have a lot of good people around me. What I'm getting at is how important is that to Honda? I th ink tha tit's been reaII y good for them. Since I started working with them in '89 or '90, I've also made my own decisions about how I want to run my program while they support us. So we treat Honda as if we owned the company. You know, how would we want our products to be portrayed at this race? How we would we get the most out of the support we give this guy? I think that works and they've been happy. We take it real seriously and real profes ionally. to raise the level of my whole program. I think that since the motocrossers started coming, both Scott and I have stepped up to the plate and worked harder than we used to. It's much more competitive now. I'm pretty much riding and testing every day now. . When. you ride that much, you start coming up with some pretty neat gadgets and ideas, like the foam stuff you had in your tires at the High Point GNCC to keep the mud off your wheels. That's right. My bike can get 40 pounds of mud on it, so that was something we tried that we're real happy with. We also came up with fender skins, which is basically a fabric that covers the front and rear fenders and the side panels, and it keeps the mud from sticking to the bike. I already have the heaviest bike on the starting line, so any mud I can keep off is going to help me. My father (Wade) and Fred Bramblett and I are always developing new products to increase the performance of off-road bikes. Are you going to start manufacturing a line of these products? We've actually already started Summers Racing Component. We only have a few items that we have to sell right now, like fork braces to decrease the amount of flex in front forks wi thout eliminating it (flexing) and make teering more accurate. We have about 15 things on the drawing board that we're thinking abou t. A lot of people credit much of the growth in professionalism and interest in off-road racing to your efforts to Is there any way for you to measure the impact you've had on Honda's XR sales? The only thing that [ know is that when I £irst started I could look around the starting line and not see very many XR's out there. Now it seems like there's a lot of them out there. I think we had something to do with that, especially on the East Coast. How much longer do you want to race? I could see myself still being into it when I'm well into my 30s. Larry RoeseIer was really competitive even though he was older than everyone. I would like to be like that. What are your goals for the next few years? Well, Dick Burleson got eight ational Enduro titles, so I think it would be great to go after nine and beat his record. I have seven right now, so hopefully in the next couple of years I will have a shot at it. Anyone you'd like to thank for helping you get the 1995 AMA National Hare Scrambles title? I'd like to thank my dad and Fred (Bramblett), who's always been there helping me. Fred's one of the most knowledgeable people in the industry, and I'm very lucky to have him work-, iog with me. And my father has a really good engineering background.1 When a problem needs solved he's real good at coming up with the answers. I can't take all the credit for this championship - there's a lot of people who've had a lot to do with our success. 0

• Cover