Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

1996 AMA National Enduro Champion ~Randy Hawkins By Davey Coombs Photos by Jay Chittenden and Kit Palmer on temporary enduro can be broken down into three eras: the Bill Baird years, the reign of King Richard Burleson and the Randy Hawkins era. Each of these off-road icons posted six or more championships in a short span of time. And each stood as tall reminders of the high level of sportsmanship, integrity and personal con viction that must be a part of those driven to succeed in this sometimes anonymous forro of racing. One month ago Randy' Hawkins, 30, of Travelers Rest, South Carolina, won his sixth title after a controversial final round of the series; one week later he was let go by Suzuki with nine years of tenure. Through both the on-track triurn ph and off-track frustration of his dismissal, Hawkins maintained his good form like the true gentleman he is. But now Hawkins is at a crossroads enduro competition is fading from the spotlight in the quasi-motocross world that is '90s off-road racing. Will Hawkins stay the course and keep going after Burleson's standard of eight titles or will he reinvent himself as a cross country racer? Can he do both? When was the last time you won an AMA National Enduro title? 1993. What did you think your chances were for getting a title this year? I was really optimistic about it. 1'd done a lot of work over the end of this year trying to prepare ourselves. Suzuki had supplied us with a new-model bike. The RM just kind of added a lit.tle more enthusiasm in our program just because we were on a new bike. And the schedule itself looked good to me: It's very difficult for me, or anyone else to beat Ty Davis in the open races in the desert in t1:le desert-type conditions, and in '95 there were a lot of races in tllat kind of conditions, like California, Arizona, Texas. With the 1996 schedule, the first part of th.e year were a lot of races in the desert but thE: last part of the year were back East. So with the schedule and how many bikes and everything, I had a optimistic outloo~ at the championship. I wasn't like, "Oh, I'm gonna kick Ty's butt and I'm gonna win the -series:' or nothing Iike that, but I worked hard so I was really looking forward to it and 1 really felt that I could get another championship. How did the season break down? Didn't Ty start off the season really hot? Yes. Ty started off great. He won the first three races right in a row, which of the first three, two of them were desert races and one of them was in Louisiana. That was really working on us, putting me down right off the bat. There was a lot of talk too that Ty was going to run away with it again like he did the previous year. But me and my mechanic (Dale Stegall) stayed together and worked together at a time when it's easy to start pointing fingers at each other. We kept looking forward and focused on what we needed to do. When did the tables start to turn in your favor? Ty won the first three, then I came back and won the next three races, one of which was the Little Raccoon in Ohio, when Ty was doing a desert race. The race is tailored to my style of riding: Nice and technical, with long sections. It helped my confidence a lot because the first win always seems to be the most difficult. At tIlat point, did you guys think that maybe Davis was trying to stretch himself too thin trying to ride other offroad series and events? Well, Ty is it great rider and stuff, but I know in the past that I've tried to do a lot of other stuff and that makes it really difficult. I really feel that the series this year, especially between the National Enduro Series and the GNCC Series, that the level of competition has stepped up quite a bit frpm the years in the past. It used to be very easy to ride two or three and be very competitive and win a championship. I think now with the level of riders and all the series, if you want to win a championship, you have to figure out which series you want to win. And if you want to win, you go to that series and focus there. Another series can be your secondary goal. I think if you try to concentrate on two championships it gets to be very difficult. Ty opted to miss a couple races, like that one in Ohio, because he was trying to win two series. It was the fourth year in a row that I won that event, but if he would have been there, things might have been different. Who knows? But I got my momentum going in Ohio and then won the following race in Rhode Island. I feel that was the turning point of the series because everybody was there. It was rocky-like conditions, I won that event. Ther:l I'came'back and won the Illinois event, too, so the seeies had changed 180 degrees. And the scheduled was changing in your favor, too. That's right - it's even and we were out of the desert for good. What was Suzuki thinking? I know they decided to shift your teammates Rodney Smith and Steve Hatch over to help, right? The decision wasn't made until the last possible minute because Ty came back and won the Kentucky National Enduro. Which, now he had four wins . to my three. It came back to that situation; I've gotta win to put myself in a championship position. So I go to Washington and I win that event and it's four (wins) to four goiug into the last round in Delaware. Basically, it really wasn't so much Suzuki's decision to have those guys ride as it was my . decision. I mean, I have two teammates just as capable of winning. This was the last race of the championship. I'm fortunate enough to be part of a team. It was like, "Hey, get these guys to come to the event and if something weird was to happen, 'possibly they could help. If nothing happens, I should be able to win it on my own." What was the math for tile championship at that point? Going into Delaware I had the upper hand. The bottom line was he had to win the race to win the championship, doesn't matter what I did. But if Ty didn't win a race, I could finish fourth and still win the champioIl$hip. To this point, how many Grand National Cross Country races and AMA National Hare Scrambles events had you participated in? With the GNCC, I think I rode nine races, had one DNF, and finished seventh. How,many events in the National Enduro Series to tIlis point had Hatch and Srnitll participated in? Hatch rode all the way through Rhode Island, which is where he hurt his knee. But he competed in over half the series. Rodney rode the California round and things like the Alligator Enduro, basically doing the high-publicity races. So their decision to ride tile last round wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime thing, was it? Not at all. Steve was a National Enduro Champion once and he rode more than half the national enduros for 1996. Rodney also rode the Ohio National Enduro this year, too. Now let's get to tile heart of the matter. I'm going to' teU you what I understood to happen and then you respond. I understand somewhere in the first part of tile race, you were riding with Rodney and Steve and possibly Mark Hyde and at some point, your bike broke and you switched bikes with Hyde. That knocked you out of any chance for a position, but you rode along with Rodney and Steve just to finish the race. Kawasaki protested that you were participating illegally. So you disqualified yourself, but that didn't matter because Ty had to get first but Smitll and Hatch beat him. That's what happened, right? That's pretty much what happened. It was my decision to have asked the'se guys to ride. r am trying to win a championship for Suzuki as well as myself. I had bike problems early in the event, and at the time I made a mistake. I decided to take Mark's bike on. In the heat of the moment, I said "Let me have your bike!" It was kind of one of those heat-of-the-moment things. So I just grabbed his bike and actually rode for quite a while before I caught back up with Steve and Rodney. By that time Steve already put about s.ix points on Ty and Rodney had already put three points on him. I caught up, rode the rest of the event. What happened after the race? When I came to the end, they took my scorecard off as soon as I came in. I went to the truck, changed clothes and then weDt up to the official and I disqualified myself. I told him flat-up-front, "I had bike problems, traded bikes with Mark Hyde and I'm withdrawing myself because I'm disqualified from the event." I was completely honest and I figured that was it because I didn't gain a single point frpm the event. I figured everything was straightened out, but that's where the protest from Kawasaki came. They charged that I aided in assisting Rodney for the event, but they couldn't have disqualified me. Was it because Rodney Smith didn't have clocks and charts and all t1lat? That's what they were saying, that he didn't have the proper equipment, but we were trying to explain to them that at this enduro we had .five restarts' and what a restart is, you go to check and you can sit there and wait until your number comes up and then you take off. A smart, experienced rider on a motocross bike with nothing on it can do this race if he really had his act together and keyed off other riders around him. I was also trying to explain in the first section Rodney, Steve and 1 all put a point on Ty, and then when I had my problems, before I could even catch back up, they had put more points on him. Were Hatch and Smith on the same minute? . No, Steve was one minute behind Rodney, but Rodney knows what's going on. He knows that if he gets in the position where you feel that you don't know where you are, slow down and wait for Steve, who was only one minute behind. Steve rode at the top of his minutes, Rodney at the bottom. When they saw a check, Rodney would take off and usually zero the check. Well, Steve was going fast enough, he was putting two points on Ty at every section, and Rodney would put on one point. They didn't need me; I wasn't even in the race. I didn't really understand what was such a problem. I think this whole scenario is one of tIlose huge issues about old rules and new technology tIlat Glnvas the entire sport. My dad's talking about letting people use radios in the GNCC. Kawasaki does tIleir helicopter thing at_ the Baja races and all that, everyone taking advantage of technology. Do you feel that the off-road sport is becoming a little less about what tile individual can do and more a result of teamwork because of things like uris? Racing is an individual sport but once you get teams involved, yeah, it changes the way people approach a race . Kawasaki can do a helicopter, people can use radios from rider to mechanic, all kinds of stuff like that are possible now. I think all the rules for all m0torcycles were written way before people realized that it could ever get to this level. What we're doing, we're still racing at old rules but with all these new ideas and new technology. We aren't breaking any rules from the rule book but the rule book is 50 years old and the rules can be interpreted differently. I think several new rules shoul.d be looked at and several things changed to prevent some of the gray areas in all forms of off-road racing. Any team can

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