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AMA/SRT HARE & HOUND NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES VOL. 51 ISSUE 15 APRIL 15, 2014 P115 Briefly... was 36 miles that sprinted through a relatively narrow corridor in the Ma- rine Corps area east of Bessemer Mine Road, doing a stint in the sand dunes and returning to the finish at Soggy. For the first time in years, both the A and B classes started on the same line. Naturally, this gave the B riders a better chance of doing well over- all, and a number of them took ad- vantage of it. Shane Bowen took his KTM to the Open B win and finished 23rd overall. High winds played a part in the week- end's racing, similar to round two at Red Mountain, California, a couple months ago. The winds seemed to My Own Race: X6 KEVIN MCKEEHAN 3RD 250CC A 13 TH O/A Thousand Oaks Powersports KTM's Kevin McKeehan moved up to the National A class for the first time, end- ing up a creditable third 250cc A. "I was a little bit more nervous than usual," he admitted. "On the start the bike wanted to kick over then it just flooded out and I sat there for 15 seconds kicking it, then I finally got it going. I was just picking my way through the dust, holding it wide and hop- ing I didn't hit anything sketchy. The first loop went pretty good. I ended up working my way up to 14th overall. Then we got lost in the section where there were no arrows. It was very lightly ribboned. We were way off course, but we ended up finding the check at the bottom of a canyon. Within five miles of the second loop, my muffler fell off so my ears are ringing real loud. Five miles from the finish, I took a fifth-gear swap - just lost the back end side-to-side and just high-sided. The bike actually snuck out under- neath me and I landed right on it on my butt." N316 SAM BANGERT 1ST 200CC A 16TH O/A "The last race was really close, but this race I got it sealed," Blais Racing Services KTM-mounted Sam Bangert said. The youngster, in his first full year in the A division, said, "I got a great start. On the left side, it was Skyler Howes, [Dan] 'Cappy' [Capparelli] and me so my start was pretty bitchen. I was top 10 off the start, then I started feeling squirrelly on the first loop and I started making a few mis- takes and people passed me. Ben Meza passed me and it ended up working pretty good; I kind of started to con- serve energy - I was like, 'I've got to slow down!' Coming into the pits, they were like, 'You're 17th overall!' So I was like, 'All right, I've got to push it now! I want to get top 15!' So me and Ben battled the whole second loop - back and forth, back and forth. It was one of the most fun battles this year! He ended up edging me out - I got 16th overall; he got 15th, I think." N835 PAUL KRAUSE 1ST SENIOR A 17TH O/A "I got a horrible start," Malcolm Smith Motorsports/Air Cleaning Technology/Shoei KTM 350 XC-F-mounted Paul Krause said. "It was just slowly pass, pass, pass, pass. The last loop, we got in that tight stuff and I was tired from pushing so hard all the way. I got past this group and then we all got lost so we rode around in circles. I kind of sifted through them again and [there was no one else in sight] so I just rode on in. The course was pretty good. The wind was - three-quarters of the time it was great; the other quarter it was blowing in your face, it was horrible." continued on next page Max Eddy Jr. got a good start and parlayed that into fifth overall and the Vet A victory, the first A rider to finish.