Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ly. We put on a little bit bigger oil cooler and added some air scoops that came off a 650L to our tank to ram air down onto the motor. We lost a little top speed because of it, but it proved good for our reliability." Campbell and Capt took runner-up, some 13 minutes behind the winning Kawasaki. "I've been second overall three times," Campbell said. "I want to win!" Class 21 (250s) turned out to be a battle between John Flores/Tim Morton/ Ronnie Wilson and Steve Hengeveld/ Jason Kawell/Oakley Lehman. Flores/Morton/Wilson chose a rear start to more easily keep track of the competition, and they caught physical class leaders Hengeveld/Kawell/Lehman on corrected time some 160 miles into the race. The race stayed dose, though. In fact, at 502 miles, Morton and Hengeveld left a pit together, but Hengeveld inched ahead. "By San Vicente, I had a minute lead," Hengeveld said. "At Santo Tomas, I had about a five-minute lead. Once we hit Ojos Negros, I was ahead seven minutes. Morton just couldn't believe it." But that didn't mean Hengeveld's ride was trouble-free. Everyone says that the end of a race is when you'hear strange sounds from your machine. Sure enough, 50 miles from the finish, Hengeveld thought disaster was imminent. "Our tranny broke:' Hengeveld said. "Actually, it never broke, but it started howling real bad. I was getting real scared. About 10 miles from the finish the tranny started to shift into neutral and get real bad, so I just putted back in. From there on to the finish, I just stayed in fourth gear because that was the only gear that wouldn't make noise." Noisy gearbox and all, the winning 250cc ended up third overall behind the Davis/Krause/Zitterkopf KX500 and the Johnny Campbell/Jeff Capt/Tim Staab/Fred Willert XR628R. The 250cc runner-up team came in just 13 minutes behind at fourth overall. And that's part of what makes longdistance races like the Baja 1000 so appealing to the faster teams: the sense of competition. And, as Krause put it, the feeling you get upon finishing. "The best part of my ride was coming to the finish line," he admitted. "To know that at that moment we did it, we finished, we won just like we had planned and worked for all year. It was just a bitchin' feeling. I wish everyone could have that feeling, crossing the finish line. It's just cool to get there. You can say, 'I've completed this thing' in (N whatever time span you did it." Just when you thought you were the fastest AMA some young gun rolls into town. Mike Young Gun' Young and his Husaberg rode herd aver all comers to rake the 4-Stroke Motocross East Championship. Md, for bragging-rights, rode off with the AMA 4-Stroke EastlWest Shoot~ut Championship. Mikes weapon of choice, the deadliest of'em all, the Husaberg Fe 50 I equippectwittl 50mm VVhite POINer conventional for1

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