IN
THE
WIND
P16
OX MOTORSPORTS POWERS TO GLEN HELEN
24 HOUR WIN
I
t may be the early weeks of
fall, but summer returned
for the weekend at Glen
Helen, just in time to torture
the racers at the John Burr
Cycles (JBC) 24 Hour of
Glen Helen endurance race.
Despite temperatures soar-
ing near 100 degrees, over
50 teams came out to con-
test the annual event, with
seven entries alone in the
Pro division. In the end, after
a close battle in the stacked
Pro class, it was the Ox
Motorsports team of Colton
Udall, Mark Samuels, Sean
Collier and Justin Jones who
took top honors.
Among the fierce competi-
tion in the Pro division was the
JCR Honda team, the JBC
Yamaha team, and of course,
the defending 24 Hour cham-
pions, Robby Bell's Precision
Concepts squad. All four teams
duked it out in the early laps of
the race with the JCR Honda
team settling into the early lead.
Johnny Campbell—who has
spent the majority of the 2015
season in the GNCC series—
brought his east coast stars out
west for some cross training at
the 24 Hour. "A controlled, multi-
ple-hour race like the 24 Hour is
very good for rider maturity, rider
education," said Campbell. "So
I brought two GNCC riders, one
being my guy, Chris Bach, and
an up-and-coming Honda rider
Trevor Bollinger."
The GNCC duo took very
little time to find their west coast
groove, and through the help
of seasoned west coast racers
Ryan Dudek and Benny Breck,
the JCR team was soon pull-
ing away from the competition.
Although they dominated the
early hours of the race, gaining
minute upon minute over their
fellow Honda team of Ox Mo-
torsports, the "real race" began
when darkness fell.
At about 9:30 p.m., Bach
limped the JCR Honda CRF450
back to the pits with an apparent
problem. "Crank case breather
had come off the top of the
valve cover so we suspected
some sort of engine problem,"
Campbell said.
A teardown revealed a
cracked piston, and fixing it set
them back nearly two hours. As
a result of their setback the Ox
Motorsports team moved into the
lead, with the Precision Con-
cepts team moving into second
and the JBC Yamaha team not
far off. As the laps clicked off
through the night, the Precision
Concepts team pushed to within
striking distance of the Ox Motor-
sports team, but soon ran into
The Ox Motorsports team ran smooth
through the night at the JBC 24 Hours of
Glen Helen to take the overall win.
