Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128355
AMA National Enduro Champion Randy Hawkins bott om of the factory contracts, by far smoking the privateer contract stuff. Do the big-doll a r cont racts that t he mo tocro ss guys are signing these d ays affect the off-road guys? Yes, de fin ite ly. That money has to come from somewhere, but where we have that little niche is that we're the group that 's spending the money. The off-road guys are the old group buying the products, so you have the 25- through 55-year-old guys that go out and spend the money to buy the product. 50, we've got that niche to cont inue to get the money from the com panies. The Chad Reed's get the bigcontracts, but a lot of the younger kids see this, and most of them don't have the mo ney; they have to go to their pare nts to get the money. For us, we're appea lingto the groups that have jobs, who are stable and can afford it. They see Randy Hawkins in an MSR riding coat, they can go buy it. 50, I think we have kind of a good niche and are stillvaluable to a company. Now t ha t yo u're pu sh ing 4 0, how do yo u fe e l physica lly? I'm prob ably in better shape than I've ever been - I have to be, be ing older. T his m ight seem obvious, but can you st ill r ide a bike like you used too? I think just raw, thrashing through stuff, I'm probably not as fast as I used to be, because back then I didn't think about it, but now I do. But for an event with more thought to it, more technical, I think I am faster, because I analyze it more. For me now it's more the experience. With age, you have more wisdom. With youth, allyou know is thro ttle. As you get older, you know when to throttle and when you don't need to thrott le. I don't need to win a race by 10 minutes; if I can win a race by one minute, or 10 seconds, a win is a win. They don't give you extra points by winning by more. So as y ou get olde r, you learn to onlygo as fast as you need to win. Y oung guys, they just want to go full tilt - that's why you see older guys win championships. Ho w d id you get to be so p roficient at t ime kee ping? When I was riding back with Husky, we didn't have the com puter stuff. I was able to learn from guys like Dave Bertram and Jeff Irwin. These guys were unbelievable ; they could kee p time with a wr istwatch. I was able to do that through the years . W he n it comes t o timekeeping t ips, what's t he first thing yo u'd tell a firs t-time e nd uro ride r? Knowyour possibles. Knowing where the check-possibles might be can give you a litt le bit of a head start. Ifyou're sitting around a corner and you think, "I've got to wait here to get on time; around the corner could be a check, " that's not good becau se, realistically, the check co uld be three-tenths down the trail and you're sitting the re not knowing it. 50 , the key is to read the rulebook and know your possibles. Youwant to be at the furthest point you can before you get to that possible ; you want to get into that check exactly o n your minute . You wan t to be in there like three, five, 10 seco nds ato p of your minute - you don't want to be in there at 30, 40, 50. Th e key is to be at the possibles at the top o f yo ur possible. I try to ride hot, as hot as I can, because w ithin IS o r 20 feet of the chec k, I can scru b off 10 to I5 seco nds. Whe n it's not a possible, a lot of the times I may be 20 seconds early, because I can start backing down w he n I get to the possible and get to within about 10 seconds. I go around the corner and don't see a check - boom! I take off and find that next possible and ge t back hot again. It's much easier to slow down than it is to speed up. Do you take very many cha nce s? I think all champions take chances. You try to outguess guys, and you try to think, but it has bitten me , and it has paid off. Most of the time , the to p guys o nly take chances when you 're com pletely out of the race . "You know what , I'll take a chance to get me back into the race , and if I screw up, it doesn 't really hurt me , because I'm already out of the race." I ride one section at a time, I don 't try to look at the whole race and map it out. The way I set up my route sheets and stuff, I know my mileage between fro m the start of the section to the reset, so I try to break down the race into each little secti on . It' s a lot eas ier to keep up with. My specialty is timekee ping, technical stuff and figuring things out . You' ve se e m t o hav e a reput a t ion as a slow starte r, someone who needs t ime t o warm u p, Yes. It wasn't so bad earlier in my career, because I really had nobody that I had to beat at the beginning of the day. And everybody was kind of the same, kind of got going and going. I always felt if I was tied or one point behind a guy after the gas, I could beat anybody. 5tinkin' Michael [Lafferty): He is the fastest when he steps out of his truck! I keep threatening to kick him in the knee before the race starts just to slow him down . It's unbelievable, even at the GNCCs, he'll turn the fastes t lap. A lot of the times, on the first lap he'll be fifth, sixth, go to the lead - he has no idea what arm pump is. My problem is that Michael will beat me thre e, fo ur, five points before gas, and after gas, I might beat him o ne or two, or maybe three, but he'll end up edging me out one point. I'm a slow starter, always suffered thro ugh arm pump. What do you co nsid e r is th e ideal enduro? I like the ones that are tight, gnarly and technical - old school. We don't get the en duros like we did years ago in the Husky days. They we re gnarly. I'd just like to get in there and just thrash ; snot's hanging out you r nose, and you're just go ing for it! So wh a t's in sto re for Randy Hawkins? I will be doing the National Enduros and selective GNCCs. My new two-year contract with Yamaha now gives me the opportunity to do other things, like I'll be , testing with what they call Hoote r Pro Cup race team car racing. I'm probably going to do a few test sessions and maybe do a race or two at the end of this year. Who knows? It could go into a ride in '06. But my first priority is Yamaha and our race team . I want to spen d more time with my family. The greatest thing for me is my tw ins being born . At first it was like, '~h , my wife's pregnant, that's cool." But onc e I saw those girls take their first brea th, I was like, if had a choice of my championships or them, they can have eve ry cham pionship I have . Now they're priority num ber o ne. eN