VOL. 53 ISSUE 6 FEBRUARY 17, 2016 P65
BY THE CYCLE NEWS STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
W
hat do you do after you win
11 Baja 1000 titles, five Baja
500 titles and countless
other Baja and desert titles? You
go GNCC racing. Huh? Well, that's
what Johnny Campbell and his
Johnny Campbell Racing (JCR)/
Honda Team did.
It doesn't seem to make a lot
of sense at first, going from one
extreme form of off-road racing to
the other—not to mention going
from one coast to the other—but
when you really want to challenge
yourself, this does indeed seem to
be the way to do it.
Johnny Campbell's name is
synonymous with Baja, but at the
end of the 2013 Baja-racing sea-
son, Campbell chose to get out of
his comfort zone and try something
completely different. He chose
GNCC racing, something on the
opposite side of the spectrum
from what he's used to doing. And
Honda, who already let Campbell
run its off-road racing program, was
on board, too, so off they went to
the east coast to the Grand Nation-
al Cross Country Series.
That first year, 2014, Campbell
hired its sole rider Chris Bach who
grew up in North Carolina and cut
his teeth racing local hare scram-
bles, and OMA and GNCC races
and would be the perfect rider for
the fledging JCR/Honda GNCC
team. With the help of Bach's expe-
rience, the team learned a lot that
first year and used their new knowl-
edge to improve rather significantly
in 2015. That year, they earned their
first GNCC victory and finished out
the season in fourth place. Camp-
bell and crew are fast learners.
For 2016, the JRC/Honda Team
expanded by picking up another
rider, Trevor Bollinger, who will
compete in the XC2 (250cc) divi-
sion. Bach will again compete in
the premier class, XC1, on a Honda
WE RIDE CHRIS BACH'S AND TREVOR BOLLINGER'S
JCR HONDA GNCC RACE BIKES
BAJA TO
WEST VIRGINIA
