INTERVIEW
JCR RACING'S JOHNNY CAMPBELL
P86
riding with their buddies. It's like
a do-it-all bike.
With the Japanese brands,
that gap in the lineup be-
tween motocross and trail
bikes has existed for a very
long time. Were you instru-
mental in getting Honda to
acknowledge the competition
off-road segment?
You know, a few years back,
Honda and I decided to change
direction in my program and
send me to GNCC [Grand
National Cross Country], the
biggest off-road racing series
in the States for motorcycles.
So I went back there and the
first couple years, I learned a lot
about the bike and the develop-
ment. We took the base of the
450R motocrosser and tried to
trail-tune it to a woods/cross-
country off-road racer. All the
little mods and updates we did
to the chassis, we did to the
suspension and the settings, the
mapping the fuel injection, the
gearing, every detail of it all the
way to the tires, really, all that
information that we gathered
applied to this new bike, the new
450RX.
The competition off-road
segment has been around
for quite a few years—what is
it that finally brought Honda
into the fold?
It just took a series of events
to happen, I think, to push tech-
nology forward. Of course, all
of us were standing by a pretty
bad economic time and back in
'08 and that caused everybody
to kind of buckle down, and we
saw some of the other manu-
facturers starting to move, so of
course, you can let them get out
there a little ways, but you can't
let them go too far. When you
see success in your competi-
tion, you either do two things:
You either go for it and want to
go beat them and catch them, or
you go away. And Honda, they're
Now the head of the Johnny
Campbell Racing (JCR) Factory
Honda team, Johnny continues
to help guide Honda off-road
development.
