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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127835
to keep pace with the speed of the front-runners, Krause's cautiou , savethe-bike ride was starting to eat away at his lead and, when he looked back, he could see Book aboard the rival KX500 starting to close in as he neared pit five, with only 90 miles to go to the checkered flag. "He got real close to me and I just said to myself, 1 can't baby it anymore. I have to go:" Krause said. "It was a fuIlon sprint all the way and at Pit Five we were only 15 or 20 seconds apart. That's when Davis go.t back on. He knew he had to pull out at least another 20 seconds because we had started 20 seconds ahead of them." If Book had known about Krause's problem, he would have been more than sympathetic. "I got on at pit three and was catching Harden when our bike seized up solid on a straightaway," Book said. "[t loosened up and started running again but I had some really worrying moments. It scared me because, if it had died, there was no way I could've done anything about it. Luckily, it was on a downhill road and I just bumped it to get it going again. Luck was with us today." The Abbott/Harden KTM team (Left) Davis and Krause confer in the pits. They were on the way to the win when their bike seized. (Below) KTM's Destry Abbott (with race organizer Casey Folks) teamed with Greg Z1tterkopf stand-in Scot Harden to card a third-place finish. contrasted sharply with the shadowy hills made tlfe leaders easy to track as they dashed across the endless valleys of northern Nevada. Fast terrain and jeep roads had the miles flyiI1g by and Davis had averaged almost 60 miles per hour when he pulled into pit two half a minute ahead of the Abbott/Harden KTM on adjusted time. The Ondas/ Book KX500 wa a minute back in third and Hamel/Belingheri were fourth. "That first section was pretty much a truck course," Hamel said. "There were very few spots where it was tight." A determined opening ride had catapulted the KTM team of brothers Nick and Russ Pearson up from seventh on the starting grid to fifth overall and first in the 250cc Pro division by the time they hit Pit Two, and the Capt/Staab Honda was hanging determinedly on to sixth. The miles flew by as the racers charged through the 55-mile section leading into pit three, just off Highway 95 north of Coaldale. Davis handed over to Krause with almost a minute and a half over Abbott/Harden, who were holding a steady minute ahead of Ondas/Book, and Hamel/Belingheri, the Pearson KTM, Capt/Staab, the KX250 team of Steve Hengeveld and Oakley Lehman. Greg Searle and Sean Hicks rounded out the top eight. The lead tearn got the first inkling of trouble on their way to pit four, a total of 168 miles into the 300-mile event. "The bike seized a couple of times between pit three and pit four, and then it did it a couple more times between four and five," Krause said. "I rode using the choke any time it got fast, trying to make sure it didn't get any worse." While the rest of the field struggled wasn't having any bike problems but it did have a rider problem near the halfway point. "I stepped.in at the last minute to help out after Zitterkopf left the team and rode from three to five to give Abbott a break:' Harden said. "We were in second most of the day and I pulled a little bit of time on Krause, but, between four and five, I lost a front wheel over a berm and the back slid out and [ got stuck under the bike. Belingheri got by me just after I got on again." "You had to wait for something like that to happen before you could do any passi~g," Belingheri said, who took advantage of Harden's bobble and slipped through into third overall. "I was in Abbott's dust the whole way but it was pretty mucl1 wide open - to the point where you were lying on the tank trying to get better aerodynamics - and that made it really hard to do any passing. I didn't want to hairball it too mud1 in the dust." The high-speed course earned rave reviews from some riders but raised concern with others. "I thought it was marked really poorly and we need to prerun if we are going to go at this fast of a speed:' Staab said. "Coming into pit three, for instance, there was a powerline road with huge 3-foot-deep holes that were not marked at all. All you can do when you're going that fast is pick up the front wheel and hope." Staab's partner, Capt, gave event organizer Folks the benefit of the doubt. "The wind last night may have blown some of the marklngs down:' Capt said. "There were enough left that there was certainly no way you could get lost. There were a couple of big washes that could've been marked better in my section." Charging hard at the front of the 250cc Pro Pack, the Pearson brothers had no trouble at all with the course or their bike. '1t was pretty fast and tl1ere were a lot of places where we could've gone faster on an open bike - they were pulling us a lot of the time - bu t I was actually expecting it to be even faster than this:' 19-year-old Nick Pearson said. "But we just had a flawless ride. The bike worked great, the suspension worked great. It just went too smooth. It was a perfect ride." Davis still had the physical lead when he took over for the final sprint into home but a wide-open stretch of dry lakebed coupled with the constant threat of Book hard on his heels conspired against him. The KX500 locked up and Book, and then Nick Pearson, flew by. "We got on this giant lakebed and I saw Davis there, under his bike working on some stuff:' Pearson said. "There was only about 15 mile of the course left after that and it was pretty fun stuff - jeep roads, buggy course that were hilly with jun1ps - and we were into the finish." Book was still in the lead when his all-out sprint came to an end and captured the overall win with a total elapsed time of 5 hours and 21 minutes, just a minute and a half ahead of second-placed Hamel and Belingheri after. 300 miles of hard-on-the-gas racing.. "[ thought we had a really good chance going into this race:' said Ondas, ilie other half of the winning team. "Me and Book are a pretty good team and I figured we'd be right there. We both had a good ride all day and no problems, except for that little seize early on. I just want to thank my partner for r:-.... ~ ......