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/1431989
RIDE REVIEW I BEN KELLEY'S FMF K TM FACTORY RACING GNCC 350 XC-F P82 around until it somehow started going forward again. And this is how it went for almost three hours. I remember thinking, and I think I say this in the video, I don't think a factory race bike has ever gone this slow or made this many bad race-line decisions. It must have been very frustrated and bored with me. But it survived! Somehow. Just like Ben Kelley did in the af- ternoon race to win his first GNCC XC1 cham- pionship. It was certainly not an easy task. KTM DOMINANCE The ladies and gentlemen that line up on the professional racer rows of a GNCC start- ing grid are not necessarily like you and me. They're bigger than us. They do motorcycle racing things I can't. And they do them quite easily, very often, and for longer. And some of those motorcycle things I can't do at all. Case in point, stacked against the WXC Women's pro racers that morning, I would have finished about midpack in class. That's fifth place or so just based on time and laps completed. The winner, Rachael Archer, had a 46-minute final lap. That's a half-hour faster than mine. Which makes sense since she finished about an hour before I did overall. As it was, I finished fourth in an Industry class behind Barry Hawk (who's done this before), Axell Hodges (who's certainly not a normal person when it comes to motorcycle riding), and Quinn Cody (who we don't really talk about beating me anymore because it's get- ting old). I was the first normal person, in my opinion. Yeah, let's call it that. Chances are, you're a lot like me in that you want to do the things these others do on your motorcycle, too. But I hope you're honest enough with yourself to know you really can't. That's the difference between mortals and those other things that get paid to race. We're in touch with earthly reality. They are not. This was two laps in and the first goggle swap. The good news is the bike still has coolant to steam, the bad news is that it would be over an hour before I made it around the course again. Brutal is putting it lightly. At the top of this immortal-racer pyramid is the most dominant team structure in off-road motorcy- cling I can find—the FMF KTM Factory Racing GNCC team. This team does not compromise. It just wins. A lot. Repeatedly. Consistently. In championship after championship after championship fashion. They don't win every event every season. But they absolutely expect to. And it shows in everything they do. Except for letting me ride their bike. When it comes down to championships, they're almost unstoppable lately. KTM hasn't lost an XC1 title in nine straight seasons thanks to an eight-year- straight run by Kailub Russell and a very stressful