Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Best in the Desert Silver State Series Round 2: Terrible's Town 250 Street took the physical lead from Fry/Stephensen before reaching the first pit at Johnnie, 33 miles into the race. Ty Davis had his Montclair Yamaha/Race Tech/Big Gun YZ426F into third with Campbell fourth and Brown fifth. At Spector's pit two, 50 miles into the race, Street tumed the bike over to Hengeveld, who maintained the lead for awhile. Street got on again at pit four, Crater Flat, chasing only Campbell. "I really felt good," Street said. "I rode five, six miles at the most and got by Johnny again and put quite a bit of time on him. Then my goggles started fogging up. It went for a long STORY AND PHOTOS (Above left) Johnny Campbell (shown) and Tim Staab made their 2001 Best in the Desert debut a good one, taking the overall win and being the only bike to break five hours. (Above right) After being second for the last three years, Johnny Campbell (left) won the $10,000 bonus put up by the Herbst family, owner's of the Terrible's Town Casino and service station empire. Tim Staab (right) has claimed the runner-up spot the past two years as Campbell's partner. By MARK KARIYA PAHRUMP, NV,APR. 7 n fter several years of frustratingly close finishes, Honda's Johnny Campbell and Tim Staab finally put in the near-flawless ride required to win the highest-paying desert race around and earned the $10,000 cash prize for victory in the Terrible's Town 250 on their Dunlop/Precision Concepts/ D.I.D-backed XR650R. They easily outdistanced the rest of the 55-team motorcycle field and were the only ones to break five hours with their time of 4 hours, 54 minutes, 55 seconds in round two of Best in the Desert's five-event Silver State Series. Steve Hengeveld and Jonah Street made it doubly sweet for Honda by leading the early going and finishing second on their HRCA/Pro Honda Oils/Precision Concepts-sponsored XR650R in 5:01 :34. Former winners Destry 22 APRIL 25, 2001 • ... Y ... I Abbott and Brian Brown claimed third in 5:09:13 aboard their Pro Circuit/Trick/NGK KX500. Team Green's Abbott had to ride the last half of the race alone after Brown crashed and suffered a broken nose. While Terrible's Town has been cold before (especially in the years when held in December as the season finale), it's never been wet. Though this one started out dry for the MS Concrete KX500 of the David Fry/Kirk Stephensen team, which started first, the clouds yielded finally a light mist which turned to rain by the time the leaders reached the halfway point. Some riders reportedly encountered sleet and hail in the higher elevations as well. e nevus ways where I could lift [the frame] up and got them to air out.. "They were completely fogged [once], and I was going down a road. I lifted them up and hit a bump, and the goggles went-gone. I didn't know how close he was or whatever, so I thought, 'Do I turn around and go get the goggles?' I thought, Maybe at the most I'm 10 miles from the [next] pit, pit five.' I decided to go for it, but it was a bad idea. I should've turned around and gotten the goggles because I had, probably, at least a minute and a half on him at that point." Trying to ride without goggles in even the light rain at the top of the course near Springdale was painful at best, and there was no way for Street to ride fast. "It was a big mistake - a lot of money to lose over a pair of goggles," he said. That's not to say that Campbell enjoyed a trouble-free ride, though. Shortly after passing Street, the defending Best in the Desert Series champ had his problems, too. "I came around a corner a bit too hot and got stuck in a rut which fed me right into a big water hole and actually watered the bike out," Campbell said. "I pulled the sidepanel off, and the filter was saturated with water. Fortunately, I was only three or four miles from the pit so I ran with no filter for a few miles; there wasn't a filter or a sidepanel on the bike. "It was a little bit frantic in the pit [number five, 14~ miles into the race] because I didn't know where the competition was at that point in the race. I knew that we were, physically, first leading our second-place bike in, but I didn't know how close Kawasaki was or Yamaha or anything, didn't know they were out of the race. "I was a little bit nervous - lost a minute or so trying to get the bike started, then lost a couple more minutes in the pits. Fortunately, Tim [Staab] was on and had an excellent ride." Staab continued, "We left [that pit] and' the bike was running a little rough; it had water in the airbox [still], and up in altitude it wasn't running very good. It started running better as I got down, but we had a little problem with fading in the [rear] brake. I don't know if the disc got bent or what but, in the really highspeed sections, we'd lose the brake so pretty much the last 120 miles we rode without a rear brake." That was still better than the problems Abbott and Brown had. Last of the Open Pros to start, they steadily picked their way through the small pack until they'd moved into third overall. As the Kawasaki duo continued, they chipped away at the gap, unofficially leading on corrected time by pit four, Crater Flat, at 108 miles.

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