Has Honda Finally Put the Record Out of Reach?
2001 FRT 24-hour Off-road Endurance World Championship
Two years ago, Johnny Campbell and five trusted teammates spent a day riding an XR600R in the Plaster City OHV Area west of El Centro. Around and around a 10-mile course they went, taking turns on the bike as day turned to night and back again. After 24 precisely measured hours, the team had covered 1362.30 miles, breaking the record of 1313.10 miles set two years before in the biennial event. At the time, with the course suspected to be slightly shorter than the original FIM-certified 10 miles, few people believed anyone could break the new distance standard-except Campbell and the rest of the American Honda squad who showed up for the seventh edition of the event also known as the 24 Hours of Le Fud. After all, they now had a full year of experience with their XR650R, and it had proven both faster and more reliable than its air-cooled, flexi-framed predecessor. And there's the confidence factor that comes with having won every Baja race plus the Best in the Desert crown in the preceding 12 months as well.
As in Baja, the team's
only real competition was the self-imposed pressure to break the old record.
Instead of 26 teams that showed up in '99, less than half that number entered
this year. So, as Campbell revealed, "The majority of the goal was to [set
a new record] because this was the first time we'd competed [at this race] on
the XR650R?and set [a new standard] that would, hopefully, never be
broken." Being the defending race
champ and record-holder to boot, the Campbell team enjoyed the honor of starting
first when promoter Otis Fudpucker gave the go signal at 7:00 A.M. on the last
Saturday in April. And in front is where they stayed, despite a momentary and
unofficial ceding in the first couple laps when fast local youngster Aaron Tuck
worked up into second physically on the WR426F he shared with Chad Houck, Mark
Kariya, Jim Loh, Tex Mitchell and Phil Zieger. But with the Honda riders able to
run comfortably in the nine-minute range nearly without exception, they
gradually put time on the rest of the field, most of which DNFed for one reason
or another.
That's not to say the
Honda squad was without its problems, though. It's just that they were quickly
fixed and generally minor to begin with, thanks to superior preparation and
experience in this sort of thing. For example, Bringle got rear-ended and tossed
off the bike in the first few hours, and as the day wore on and the course wore
out at midday, the crew replaced the head pipe which had cracked and, later, an
overworked shock-just to stay on the safe side. (With temperatures hitting a
good 100 degrees, the shock wasn't the only thing feeling a bit faded.) At
night, they also lost the HID lighting system twice; fortunately, a halogen
backup mounted next to the HID lamp got the bike back to the pits both times
without losing much time. They also replaced the clutch in the wee hours of the
morning, as it began to slip a little as 24 hours crept closer. More routine maintenance included five rear-wheel changes and three fronts, four bottom chain-guide blocks, one set of brake pads and adding only a quart of oil. "The bike did
good," Campbell pointed out, "as fast and as hard as we beat that
thing, man. I've been kind of reserved at our other races, like the 2000-mile
races-'Okay, it's got to go a long way.' This one, we knew we had to go a long
ways, but to break that record we had to just go, had to hammer." It wasn't until three or
four in the morning that they were fairly confident that they'd get the record,
however. By then, of course, they were literally hundreds of miles ahead of
their nearest competitors, the other Open Four-stroke team of Robert Barnum, Sal
Garcia, Robert Lightfoot, Jimmy McCay and Tim Pfeiffer, also on an XR650R. The
privateers would eventually cover 1223.39 miles. Third went to the Dewey
Belew/Mark Brown/Danl Hagen/Chris Hoppe/Bill McNeer squad on yet another XR650R,
their total coming to 1217.86 miles and earning the Open Motorcycle class
victory. Not to be outdone, the
ATVs fared quite well, despite the heat and constant wind, with the first two
finishers setting records. Though not expected to be a big threat, the Alfonso
Castro/Jesus de la Flocha/Doug Eichner/Enrique Felix/Allen White quintet kept a
steady pace on their Roll Design 250, taking the overall ATV lead within the
first six hours. They ended up covering 1097.88 miles, barely surpassing one of
the oldest marks in the books of 1080.00 miles set in '89.
Second in the ATV ranks
and first Open ATV also set a record. Riding a 310cc Honda, the Eric Dollente/Todd
Hunter/Tim Neidhardt/Cain Smead/Jim Stephensen team did 1043.48 miles, squeaking
past the previous class mark of 1035.20 miles set in '95. In all, 10 teams managed
to reach the finish. The last, SuperLite entry Ronnie Golden/Bryan Saasta/James
Saasta/Jordan Saasta/James Skipping, managed 59.84 miles-just under six laps in
24 hours for an average speed of something like 2.5 miles per hour. That's
because their first lap required an astounding seven hours, 18 minutes, 16
seconds. Due to the rules and how downtime is computed, that dictated the
complete the remaining laps in an average time of four hours, 25 minutes or else
they'd go too fast and end up with more than four hours of accumulated downtime,
thus houring out. By contrast, Campbell's winning team averaged 59.2 mph for the
24 hours. But finishing with a new
record is something the Campbell team can savor for two more years when
Fudpucker holds the next edition of the event. More than one person in the pits
claimed something along the lines of, "He only holds it every other year so
you forget how miserable you are out here!" Even Campbell, asked if he
looked forward to defending the title in two years, replied with a laugh,
"Hopefully, we won't have to do it again!" "But," he added,
"it's hard to say that we won't do it again because of all the good data
that we receive in a controlled race-test environment. In most [desert] races,
you're not doing lap after lap so it's hard to get a data/mileage on headlights,
clutches, tires, brake pads, whatever. It's just a really good test, especially
for lights. One reason we race the race is for durability testing." All he's got to do is gather up five other individuals who can prove their durability as well as their speed because they've obviously got a machine that can do it.Mark Kariya |