Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

:Briefly... Russ Pearson finis hed second and was closing in on the leader toward the end. KTM's Kurt Ca se lli ended up having a terrible day, but it didn't start out that way. Caselli nailed the holeshot on his 250cc SX, but things went downhill quickly. After getting passed by Nathan Woods during the first few miles, Caselli went down in the dust but got back up and started charging again until his rear wheel bearings gave out , causing the chain to come off a few times. He eventually got the bike back to the pits, where he replaced the rear wheel. Caselli tried to like soil, and lots and lots of dust. The riders did, how ever, get so me breaks from the dust wh en it hailed/rained/snowed briefly at about the halfway point, but it wasn't enough to fully saturate the soil (but enough to make some spots slippery and tricky). As it turned out, though, the dust was the biggest obstacle the riders had to deal with over the weekend , and the best way to dea l with it was to get a good start. And that' s exactly wh at Woods did. But he didn't get the holeshot; that wen t to Kurt Caselli on the KTM factory- backed SX 250. But right on his tail was Woods on the 450cc Yamaha four-stro ke. Woods we nt to work on Case lli immediately. Since the first mile or so was on the well-watered Carbon County MX track, Wood s wanted to get around the KTM ASAP, before they hea ded out into the dusty desert. Just a few turns before exiting the MX track , Woods zapped Caselli, who, shortly thereafter, we nt down just as the course ente red the desert . The crash caused a think plume of dust in fro nt of the rest of the pack, and that certainly he lped Wood s get away. Wit h clear sailing ahead of him, Woods sprinte d off and pulled out an almost 20-seco nd lead over Honda rider Mark T illey, aboard the Tem ecula Motors ports CRF450R thumper, at the com pletion of the first lap. Tilley also got a good start and managed to avoid the Case lli dust bomb wh en he crashed . "I saw him [Caselli] go down , and I was the first one to get to him before the dust came up, so I didn't get caught up in it," Tilley said. About I0 seco nds be hind Tilley chased a pair of desert racers - former hare and hound cham p Destry Abbott and current champ Russell Pearson . "The start was it," Abbott said. "The start was so dusty that everybody spread out right off the bat." Right beh ind Pearson was previousround winner Bobby Bonds, who rode most of th e first lap with his goggle film napping in the breeze beh ind him. "The second straightaway, I got hit with a rock on my Roll-Offs, and they break . So I had no Roll-Offs," Bonds said. "I'm like, 'Just deal with it' and got up to second." But it took a little wh ile for Bonds to catch and pass Pearson , Abbott and Tilley for that spot. It wasn't until the fifth lap wh en Bonds got into seco nd, and when he did, he found himself 35 seconds behind Woods and also with a suddenly sour-running bike. "I was catch ing Woods a little bit, and then the bike starts cutting out," Bonds said. "It starts cutting out worse and worse; the filter 's clogged - I know it. So I rea ch back and pull a Filter Skin; I pulled that off, and it ran a little bit better, but it was just too clogged . Almost a whole lap, the bike wo uld barely move , and I had to run it up a hill once." Bonds managed to get the bike into the pits, where the Kawasaki pit crew swapped filte rs. But the unplanned sto p cost him valuable time and places . "I lost probably five minutes total ," Bonds said. Meanwh ile, with about four laps left, Woods cruised we ll out in front , ahead of Pearson, Abbott, Tilleyand Bonds. During those last four laps, Pearson actu ally started whittling away at Wood s' lead. At one point, Pearson was 1:2 1 beh ind the leader, the n he was I: I7 be hind, then I:03, and then, on the last lap, Pearson was just 29 seconds be hind Woods, but that would be as close as he would ge t , as the checkered nag came out after the 12th lap. "I pushed as hard as I could," Pearson said. "I could never see Nathan , so I could never judge off of him or if I was catc hing him. He had too big of a lead when I got into second." Pearson wasn't th e only rider on the move at the end - so was Bonds. With his KX250 runn ing cleanly again, Bonds managed to get around Tilley for fourth and the n Abbott for third . And while Pearson was creeping up on Woods , so was Bonds on him. Unfortu nately for Bonds, time ran out after clos ing to with in 13 seconds of Pearson, making the final finishing order: Woods, Pearso n, Bonds, Abbott and Tilley. "I tried," Bonds said. "I was hoping to get him [Woods]. At the end , I prob ably finished about 30 seconds be hind Woods , so without thos e problems I seriously think I could've wo n tod ay. It's still a long series , and anything can happe n. I really wan t to win th is th ing, and I th ink I showed that today." After fIVe of 13 roun ds, Woods leads Bonds by 33 points, 128-95. "It wasn't easy out there," Wood s said. "The re are a lot of top-notch riders out there. I got a decent start and just settled back. Kurt [Caselli] was right there, and he 's a really good rider, and I started to put a little pressure on him. I had some good lines and got around him, and I guess he went down . After that, I just kept my pace up. That was my main thing, keeping mount a comebac k, but the damage was done. He ended up 21st and dropped from third to fifth in the standings. Lance Smail, the winner of the opening round of the se ries in Mesquite, Nevada, will undergo knee surgery short ly after the Utah round. "I'm going to go home, fix my knee and take the whole summer off," Smail said. "Hopefully I'll come back strong at the end of the year and finish off the WORCS ser ies and probably hit two GNCCs as well." Smailwants to go after the WORCS title again next year. "I'd love to stay with Kawasaki, come back swinging and try to win the title next year." Speakingof surprises, David Pearson chose to ride the big KXSOO on a course that, even though it had some fast sections, seemed better suited for smaller machinery. Why? "Just because I'm a bigger kid and the start was going to be important," Pearson said. "The 2S0, I cannot get a good start - I weigh too much. It's too small for me. I figured it was more of an open course, plus the start . It was the right bike for me. Actuallythe right bike for me wo uld be a KX4S0 [fourstroke ], but they don't have those yet." KTM rider Bryce Olson ended up borrowing a bike from Kurt Caselli for the Pro race. "I brought two bikes out here, but they bot h broke on Saturday," Olson said. "I'm lucking that Rich [Caselli, Kurt's dad] let me borrow one of his 2S0s. It worked great , so I want to thank them. " www.cyclenEWs.com CYCLE NEWS • MAY 5, 2004 37

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