Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

long; tragedy struck when Ortiz crashed. "Just after El Alamo, there's a very fast, rolling dirt road," Morton said. "There is an area where it goes down a little bit of a hill and then back up. In the lowest part, there are two rain ruts. They have always been there and they are a fairly decent size - maybe one and a half feet deep and two feet across. I think Ortiz was going as fast as he could go, and he swapped on the first one and cartwheeJed on the econd." The 26-year-old rider reportedly hit a fence post about 15 feet off the course and was killed instantly. "There was nothing man-made, and there were two spectators who saw it," Morton said. "I knew it was bad, because they were still doing CPR on him when I got there 10 minutes later. He was.a friend of mine. I'd known him for 12 years. He had just graduated from college and had a three-month-old son." Campbell still had the lead when he handed. the bike over to Ogilvie at the 180-mile mark, but the Staab/Longman/Bringle Honda was refusing to' give any ground. "I was leading for parts of the first 100 miles," Staab said. "I was within 10 seconds of Campbell at times, which put me ahead on time, and he only had 30 seconds when I got off at the 160-mile mark, 20 miles before El Alamo." The Healey /Burnett team was still in third as it headed out from El Alamo for the dash around Mike's Sky Ranch, and the Mitchell/Wilson/Blount trio were riding like men possessed to try to close the gap back to fourth. "W,2 did an eight-minute shock change, but with all the time I lost getting to the pit, I think we lost about 24 minutes in all," Mitchell said, "but we kept our heads up and rode hard all day, and each of us made up a little time in our sections - a couple of minutes at a time." The rough going around the back of Mike's Sky Ranch made things miserable for Morton on the KTM. "It was really. rough back there - the worst I've ever seen it," Morton said. "It was really washed out, with a lot more rocks and a lot less dirt than in other years. Running at midthrottJe, I had to jus.t hammer through the whoops and rocks, because I couldn't twist the throttle to get the front wheel up. That part was tough." And the course wasn't just rough. "It was a lot tighter and more technical than most Bajas," Ogilvie said. "Our speed average for the win was only 48 mph, which is actually slow by Baja standards, and that shows how tight and technical it was. It was a good race- course." As the racers cleared Mike's, dashed through Valle de Trinidad and then headed northwest towards the Pacific Ocean for the sprint toward Santo Tomas, the positions at the head of the pack remained the same. Only the margins were changing, and most of the . changes could only be measured with a second hand. "The margins were small. I put a minute on the other (Honda) team up through Mike's, and about another two minutes in the next section out to Yurapan," Ogilvie said. "When I gave the bike back to Campbell leaving Yurapan, we had four minutes and 10 seconds over Staab's bike, which is pretty close as Baja races go." Campbell found out just how close as he headed back to Ojos Negros and began retracing the opening section of the course back to the start/finish line on the outskirts of Ensenada. "About five miles after the Ojos pit, with 40 miles to go to the finish, I got a rear flat. I was a little concerned, because our margin wasn't huge and I was worried about the wheel breaking up or the tire coming off the rim, so I really cruised until I got to Guadalupe Valley," Campbell said. "There's a long sand wash there, and you don't have to worry about a flat when you're in sand, so I pinned it." Campbell met up with a pit vehicle at a road crossing 10 miles from the finish, changed the rear wheel in 30 seconds, and launched an all-out sprint for the finish. "He rode like a madman, because we didn't know where Staab was," Ogilvie said. "Luckily for us, he had just settled into second and wasn't pressing really hard. If he had been gung ho, it's possible he might've passed us." The Campbell/Ogilvie Fox/FMF/ Pirelli/IMS/K&N / Acerbis-backed Honda crossed the finish in nine hours and 36 minutes, taking the overall win seven minutes ahead of the secondplaced Honda, and 12 minutes ahead of the first Trophy Truck on total' elapsed time. For Campbell, the win was a blessed relief. "I haven't had the best of Baja 500 luck in my career~" he said. 'Tve been down here since 1991, and I've finished a couple, but I've never had a clean ride. The difference this time was that I was ou t with a broken ankle for three months, and I had tiine to really think about what I needed to do to win. I really prepared, mentally a"-d bikewise - I paid a lot of attention to things, and it worked out well." For Ogilvie, it was a walk down memory lane. "This makes me the oldest guy to ever win the Baja 500 overall, and I think Larry Roeseler and myself are the only ones with wins in three decades," Ogilvie said. '1 really only came to this race because Campbell needed a good consistent partner who knew Mexico and everybody else was injured or had something else going on, but it gave us a chance to work with the younger riders who are coming up. Part of our strategy was to give Staab and Longman the opportunity to pre-ride with us all week so they could see how hard you have to work. You don't just show up and win on Saturday. You get up every day at 5 a.m. and don't get back to the hotel until 7:30 at night for a week when you're preparing for this race." . The Staab/Longman/Bringle team reported a trouble-free ride all the way. "It was flawless. I fell once in the pine forest, but I didn't even stall the bike," Staab said, "and the conditions were awesome because it had rained. You could see all the tracks and you had perfect traction. There were even some puddles in the rolling hills off the start. That was different for a Mexico race." The Healey /Burnett entry was still holding onto third as it began the charge to the finish, and its riders had no idea that a determined Mitchell had just launched a no-holds-barred sprint from just a few miles behind. "Going into fhe last 60 miles, we were five minutes down for third," Mitchell said. '1 charged really hard and I probably had my best ride in that section." The stopwatches showed Mitchell was the fastest rider through the final section, and his speed paid off with just 3. miles to go. "About 3 miles from the finish I caught Burnett's dust. Be had started behind us, so I knew I had to beat him by 30 seconds, and I didn't think I could do that, so I just wanted to come across the line together to let him know I made time on him," Mitchell explained.. "But when I came around one of the -last big corners half mile from the end, he had run out of gas." The last-minute glitch turned the third -place finish over to the Mitchell/Wilson/Blount XR600. "We came back from our problems and got third," Mitchell said. "We are a (left) Honda XR40D-mounted Cliff Matlock and Matt Barney teamrned up to take the Class 40 win in fifth overall. (Above) Rain kept conditions ideal at this year's Baja 500, as Mike Healey demonstrates. Healey and teammates Mark Bumett and Rich Truchinski finished fourth overall. very pleased with that. We lost 24 minutes overall, and we'only got beat by 17. Without the shock problem, we would've been right there." The Morton/Hjalmarson/Willert/Jef Martinez team reported a slow and boring ride all the way around the course, but their KTM/FMF/ Applied Racingbacked KTM 250 held up all the way to the finish to earn them the win in the 250cc division. Morton proudly announced that their victory was the first for a KTM in a SCORE event since 'Danny Hamel and Dan Smith won the San Felipe 250 back in 1991. "It was pretty uneventful from 75 miles on. Once we had the engine problem, we just maintained all the way to the finish and it was a mellow ride for us," Morton said. "The only interesting thing was learning how to ride the bike at half-throttle. It took a lot more technique to make it go fast. I'm actually glad the bike wasn't running well because, if it had been running good, I might've thrown away the race anyway because of seeing what I saw after Ortiz crashed. It was okay to ride mellow for the day, because it takes a lot of the wind out of your sails when you see a tragedy like that." A blistering ride by Cliff Matlock and Matt Barney took them to victory in Class 40 and a stunning fifth overall. The Matlock/Barney team spent much of their time dicing with the lead Class 30 team made up of Brian Schmuckle, Dennis Green and Mike Barnhill. Late in the race, the Schrnuckle/Green/Barnhill bike came to a sputtering halt after running out of gas, which let the Matlock/Barney team pull ahead and take fifth. Schmuckle, Green and Barnhill managed to find more gas and went on to take Class 30 top honors. f,N Baja 500 Ensenada, Mexico Results: June 7, 1997 OPEN,!. Johnny Campbell/BNce Ogilvie (Hon); 2. Tim Staab/Casey Longman/Greg Bringle (Hon); 3. Tex Mitchell/Ron Wilson/Brent Blount (Hon); 4. Mark Burnett/Mike Healey/Rich Truchinski (Hon); 5. OifE Matlock/Matt Barney (Hon). 250: 1. Tim Morton/Eric Hjalmarson/Fred Willert/Jeff Martinez (KTM). Over 30= 1. Brian Schmuckle/Dennis Green/Mike Barnhill. Ovu 4&. 1. Oil! Matlodc/Matt Barney 25

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