Round 1
OFF-ROAD
~
lA.Il-RE
TO
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t could be a long, two-man battle for the
2005 AMNFMF Racing National Hare &
Hound Series Championship if round one
is any indication of things to come. The
38th annual Winter Classic - hosted by the
Desert Motorcycle Club and staged off Bessemer Mine Road, east of Lucerne Valley - saw
2003 Series champ Russell Pearson and his
Montclair Yamaha/Zip-Ty Racing/Moose-backed
YZ450F run out front all day, though defending
champ Destry Abbott kept his Acme Suspension/Dunlop/THOR-sponsored Team Green
10<500 close behind. Their personal battle put
them well clear of Pearson's teammate and former series champ Ty Davis, who would claim a
solid third overall on a 250.
The Desert M.e. did an excellent job of providing racers with a truly National-caliber hare
and hound. It started with a bomb run just north
of Soggy Dry Lake, which lived up to its name,
and immediately dumped competitors into
some challenging, rocky canyons before heading
west to Cougar Buttes. Pearson didn't get the
greatest of starts off the line, but he threaded his
way into the lead with Abbott on his fender.
"Destry and I were kind of pretty close off
~
a !It.!/l' b
of.JIld he
I
42
FEBRUARY 9,2005 • CYCLE NEWS
Russ
AMNFMF Racing National Hare & Hound Series
PERRSON
SHOWS THEM THE
WRY RROUND
LUCERNE
STORY AND PHOTOS
BY MARK KARIYA
just went through some rougher stuff right at the
bomb," Pearson said. "I got by him there. Shoot,
we pretty much stayed like that the whole first
loop - kind ofthe whole race."
As they looped northward around the Fry
Mountains before turning south for the run back
to the pits, Abbott couldn't quite catch Pearson,
and Pearson couldn't run away from Abbott.
"Basically, it was pretty uneventful besides
following him all day," Abbott said. "He was really riding well, and my bike was working really
well. We both were riding really well; I just
couldn't do too much. I'd get 15 seconds, 20
seconds was the closest I could get, and then
he'd pull maybe 45 on me. We kept going back
and forth."
Pearson led Abbott into the pits at the end of
the 37-mile first loop. Team Green's David
Pearson on his Pro Circuit/Dunlop/Moosebacked 10<500 and Davis dashed out of the pits
together, vying for third with XR's
Onlyrremecula Motorsports/O'Neal XR650R
rider Mike Childress fifth and Precision
Concepts/Braking/MSR XR650R pilot Steve
Hengeveld sixth. Joey Lanza motored out of the
pits seventh on his FMF/MotorexITLD KTM 525
MXC.
01
on ~'s Santa Barbara
