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CROSS COUNTRY Round 8: Burr Oaks Grand National Cross Country Series (Left) Fred Andrews recorded his first win of the GNCC season at Burr Oaks. (Right) Defending champ Scott Plessinger battled back and forth with Andrews, ending up second. (Below) Doug Blackwell finished third. By Jim Talkington 32 MILLFIELD, OH, AUG. 25 able has it that "slow and steady" always wins the race. That may well have worked when the field consisted of a tortoise and a hare, but little of that applies to present day offroad racing (or so one would think). Of all the adjectives that could apply to round nine of the AMA Grand National Cross Country Series, slow is certainly not one of them. Steady? Definitely. ·Smooth and steady" is how former series champion Fred Andrews rode from start to finish to claim his first GNCC victory of the 1996 season. After three hours and 15 minutes of racing, only 16 seconds separated first through third places, with KTM's Scott Plessinger claiming second and Yamaha's Doug Blackwell rounding out the podium for his best finish of the season thus far. "I think that Doug, Scott and I were just trying to ride smooth and smart and not get stuck anywhere," Andrews said afterward. "It was like a trail ride, almost, the three of us riding (together). We were going at a real good pace, the three of us switching the lead. It made it a lot of fun." This race weekend saw a liberal amount of rain falling Saturday morning, followed by a heavy blanket of fog Sunday moming. The race would be run under a perfect, blue sky, late-summer day with tempe.ratures in the mid-80s. The remaining slick uphills and bikeswallowing mudholes would be the deciding factor in this year's event, not the blinding dust clouds of the previous year. In addition to the usual collection of off-road heroes present in the Pro class, three notable riders from way west of the Mississippi also were in attendance. Desert ace and Nevada off-road rally winner Johnny Campbell was present with Team Honda boss Bruce Ogilvie, having spent the previous week at Scott Summers' Kentucky farm as part of an "east/west" exchange program. Summers will be heading to the December 6 Laughlin, Nevada, Best in the West round with his big XR to give desert raejng another go as his part of the trade. KTM had two additional representatives in the Pro field with PiOche, Nevada's teenage desert speedster Nick Pearson and Washinglon state's Jason Dahners - the latter currently sitting third in points in the AMA National Hare Scrambles Series but planning to hit all of the remaining GNCC events in addition to the Hare Scrambles while working out of teammate and current cross country champ Scott Plessinger's Hamilton, Ohio, home. The Plessinger family hosted both Pearson and Dahners the previous week after all had met at KTM's annual dealer meeting in Georgia. The appearance of four series regulars - Team Suzuki's Steve Hatch, Randy Hawkins and Rodney Smith, along with Honda's Scott Summers - was especially notable, the quartet having just returned from Finland with an overall trophy team status at the International Six Days Enduro. Just a week after finishing their duties for America overseas, they slipped back into the task at hand of chasing national championships. summers and Hatch came to Millfield sitting one and two in the GNCC points standings, but neither was to share the spotlight on this particular day. When the starter's flag dropped, Hatch bplted from the dead-engine start into a lead that he would maintain around the spectator motocross area before entering the trail. Plessinger, Andrews, Blackwell and Summers filled out the top five, followed by the rest of the 18-rider Pro field. Hatch almost immediately would surrender the lead of his own accord as he was still nursing a broken little toe and two c.racked toes from a mishap in Finland. "Hatch didn't get to walk the track (due to his injury), so he just moved over and let Scott (Plessinger) and me by," Andrews said. "It's a lot e~sier to follow when you don't know where you're going." Running at the front, fender to fender, after lap one were Plessinger, Andrews and Blackwell, with Summers 20 seconds off of the pace in fourth. Just over a minute back in fifth through seventh places was the Suzuki team of Hatch, Hawkins and Smith, respectively. It was obvious by this point that the friendly points leader froin New York was nursing not only a very tender foot but also his series points lead. TIle Suzuki riders would battle among themselves throughout the day, but never threaten for one of the podium positions. Accounting for Summers' deficit on the lead trio at the end of lap one was a thrown chain that occured while he was running second to Plessinger. Unable to account for the cause, Summers remounted the chain only to have the same disaster occur on the following lap. "At the end of the first lap, I was right behind Plessinger, and the chain came off," Summers said. "Then it came off again on the following lap. TIlls time it got wadded up in the shifter, and I couldn't get it back on, so 1 had to go back and get some tools." Summers eventually would re-enter the field to circulate the last two laps, well out of a profitable points position. After the event, Summers would observe that "for some weird reason, it never came off again. 1 put it back on and was basically trying to figure out why it happened in the first place, but I never did see the problem (again). I guess 1 was just subjected to some bad luck." With the top three spots never again challenged by the rest of the field, Andrews, Plessinger and Blackwell each took turns heading the pack. On lap three, a mudhole threatened to keep Plessinger from the winner's circle, but fate was kinder to him than it had been to Summers. "I just buried it in this mudhole right before we gassed, and had to dig it out," Plessinger said. "1 think 1 lost about 50 seconds. I just couldn't believe it. I buried it, was digging it out and wondered, 'Where is everybody?' I figured they'd be coming." Luckily for Plessinger, he was able to make up the deficit while Blackwell was enjoying a nip-and-tuck lead battle with fellow Yamal1a rider Andrews. After creating a pace that only allowed him one opportunity to sip from his water bottle, Plessinger put his KTM into second once again on the next-to-last lap, entering the barrels less than one second behind Andrews' Yamal1a. Andrews soon would surrender the lead, but not entirely without design. "At Brownsville (the previous round) I led the whole way," Andrews said. "Then about a mile from the finish 1 hit a lapper and fell down, so that was in the back of my mind. That last lap,