On The Fast-Trak 11-15-02

Year 4, Issue 2
by John Pellan
jpellan@atvscene.com

Buenas noches desde San Ignacio, Mexico!
I’m finishing up the busiest year of my life south of the border in preparation for ATV Scene’s assault on the 2002 Baja 1000. The time traveling down the long, bumpy and narrow Mexico Highway 1 finally gives me the chance to up date you on the latest happenings within our great sport. I’m pre-running my section of the course with my friends Poncho Castro and Keith Little. What an adventure! There’s far more to the Baja than just 1000 miles.

Our ATV Scene.com team (myself, Nick Nelson, Poncho Castro, Ceasar “Chanate” Lopez, Jovany Pinental, Joel Garcia and Jason Greenhaw) is kind of teaming up with members of what can best be called the All-Star team of; Wes Miller, Tim Farr, Keith Little and Shane Hitt. We’re racing a long travel 440EX.

We originally planned on running an immaculate 265cc Sparks Racing, Arens framed R, that the core of the team has ran in the prior SCORE events to earn a respectable third place in the standings as of yet, but we’re thinking the 1017 miles will take their toll on our two-stroke motor. Thanks to excellent sponsorships we’ve nabbed along the way, (Trinity Racing, Denton Racing, PEP, OMF, Douglas Wheel, Maxxis, Wiseco, PIAA Lighting, Ricky Stator, Pro Grip, Tag, Hinson Racing, EBC) we have the best equipment money can buy and we’re very much capable of winning. I’m really looking forward to this race.

Baja 1000 pre run play by play… (all the unfortunate details)
12:50 PM Tuesday
Poncho, Keith and I met up with Wes Miller and Nick Nelson, driven by their chauffeur, freestyle extremist, John “Pigspin” Chandler. So far they’ve survived John’s driving (and his fowl aromas) with minimal problems. Maybe his triple digit speeding ticket a few days prior has slowed him down – let’s hope so. Anyway, Nick wasn’t even sore from riding his dirt bike with 3 gallons of gasoline tied to his back after pre running his 240 miles, but he was a little slumped over.

1:51 PM Tuesday
Poncho and I discuss how we’ll take on the 50-mile whoop section that is rumored to be at the 900 mile mark. I quickly agree to Pocho’s suggestion of him taking on this hellish section. This allows me the last leg. I’ll get to bring it on home into La Paz! How cool is that!

5:21 PM Tuesday
I drop Poncho and Keith off at their hand off spots. Keith will ride the 237 miles that Poncho and I split up. Keith is happy he’s figured out the trick to starting Poncho’s XR650 bike and feels good about being able to start the quad they’ll be racing — a specially built Baldwin Motorsports Lonestar XR650 dream quad.

3:12 PM Wednesday
I finally get my seat time. This year was pretty full for me and didn’t let me ride much, so the 130 mile pre run is going to be fantastic! Despite all the tools and extra weight in Poncho’s “training back pack” strapped to my back, I feel great on the 2003 special edition Yamaha Raptor (thank you Terry Beal and Yamaha Motor Corp for hooking me up!)

4:42 PM Wednesday
Keith signaled for me to ride ahead so he could ride comfortably out of my dust. Perhaps I felt a little too good on the mighty Raptor and found myself clipping along at a pretty good pace. You guessed it. I crashed and crashed hard. The fourth-gear-pinned-crash left me with a badly broken collar bone, a sore lower back and severe bruises on my hip and leg. I realized that was it, no Baja 1000 for me. It was over just as quick as it started.

 4:54 PM Wednesday
Trying to beat the fast approaching cold night, Keith and I make our way to Hwy. 1. The 10-mile ride on a bumpy trail with a horribly bent axle and A-arm with a broken collar bone was not in the plans, but a definite “behind the scenes” part of the Baja. I was experiencing the all to real side of the Baja 1000. I now have even more respect for the teams that have finished the Baja.

5:12 PM Wednesday
Keith takes off to find Poncho and the truck, which is waiting for us over 100 miles away. A man has a lot to think about while stranded in the middle of the desert. Thank God I wasn’t badly hurt. Actually life felt all the more special as I waited patiently while catering to the Raptor’s battery charge so my all too important headlight would continue to shine for Ponsho’s return.

6:30 PM Thursday
We find out that two other members of the ATV Scene.com team have crashed and injured themselves as well. Our Jovany Pinental crashed and broke his arm and our Joel Garcia broke his hand. Maybe it’s that darn number 13A we ended up with? Anyway, Rory Nevens, our ace mechanic, will step up to the plate and take some of the slack off the rest of the guys.

Tim Farr injured
Arguably the best all around rider of all time (he’s got my vote anyway), Tim Farr broke his collar bone the day after I did while trail riding in Ohio. He hit a rock and went over the bars then got pounded by his quad. Unfortunately the break couldn’t be much worse. It’s not only broke, but it keeps dislocating from his sternum, (I’ll take my clean break in half over Tim’s injury any day). He still took his flight to So Cal and plans on chasing their team down to La Paz. Joe Byrd will take over Tim’s section.

Kory Ellis injured
More injuries to report on. Kory Ellis fell off his ladder and sprained his ankle so bad he could barely walk. A record breaking season worth of professional cross country, TT and MX racing in multiple classes without injury and he gets hurt on a ladder. Go figure. He did find the foot-power to get in his truck and go pick up his allotment of ’03 Suzuki Zs from Alba Motorsports. Kory will ride Suzuki thumpers in the Pro and Pro Production class at all the GNCs and might show up to race one at the first GNCC in Florida.

12 Hours of ATV America to air on television
Football wont be the only sport seen this Thanksgiving weekend. Mark your planners and set your VCRs because the inaugural 12 Hours of ATV America will air on Fox Sports Net’s High Octane Wednesday Nov 27 @ 10am/4:30pm/2:30am Eastern/Pacific.

High Octane’s Tim Zimmerman said that he has received a ton of e mails and phone calls from people wanting to know when the event will be highlighted on their show. We never gave out his e mail addy to anyone so it seems that a lot of you are pretty resourceful when it comes to wanting to see ATV racing on television.

The event that never was
I came out to California early and planned on staying late after the Baja was over. Reason – to team up with H-Bomb Films and promote an event that highlighted ATV racing to the fullest. It was to be a pro invitational quad race with a $10,000 purse, and a $5000 Freestyle Showdown. Most of the top names in the sport and the best freestyle quad artists in the world would have attended. In addition we were going to showcase an ATV Offroad Fury 2 tournament, an ATV expo, a wide screen showing of Huevos 5 and we had Alien Ant Farm, Slightly Stupid and Guttermouth ready to rock the house.

The plan was to allow everyone a try at winning a Playstation 2 game unit, the new Offroad Fury 2 game and a dvd or VHS version of the new Huevos 5 video. The ATV Offroad Fury 2 Tournament was to advance the two players with the best lap times of the day. They would then go head to head with the winning pro rider of the the race and the winning freestyle rider in a four player-6 lap main event on the wide screen just prior to the introduction of Alien Ant Farm. Would have been pretty cool huh? Everyone thought so here and everyone but a select few at Sony agreed it needed to be done as well.

It would have went down Dec 7 of this year at the Orange Show in San Bernardino, CA – – BUT Sony backed out at the last minute – leaving this event as another dreaded DNS for our great sport. Not to worry though, our time is going to come – sooner than some might think.

No Huevos 5 video premier this year
Since Sony took so long to not go ahead with the above event, the Huevos 5 video premier party wont happen either. I’ve seen H5 (a few times now) and can’t believe what the “Bombsquad” (Wes Miller’s crew of aerial ATV acrobats) busts out in this video. The freestyle bar is now raised. There’s also a cool segment filmed from the vast sand dunes in South Africa, a piece on Jeremiah Jones, the nationals and more. It’s a must see, what more can I say.

Offroad Fury 2
I’ve had an unexpected amount of time on my hands all the sudden. Of course I’m playing this game on Wes’ wide screen and if this overdue issue of mine seems a little light winded, you know why. This game ROCKS! It’s game-play is incredibly accurate and the graphics, (even though they forgot the ATV Scene.com banners) sound and music are top notch, making it the best video game I’ve ever played. I’m not sure yet who’s responsible for all the accuracy this game delivers but I have a feeling freestyle great and D4 Bombsquader, August Goebel, who works for Rainbow studios in Phoenix, had a lot to do with it. Type in “IGIVEUP” and you’ll unlock everything.

ATV Scene forums
I’ve been checking out ATV Scene’s forums and classifieds. They’re impressive to say the least. There’s a ton of reputable, knowledgeable and professional people within our industry on the ATV Scene forums. If you haven’t checked them out your missing out on a ton of valuable inside info. And if you are a contributor, it’s an honor to have you within the pages of ATV Scene. Thank you for your involvement! It helps the sport more than you might even realize. Last but not least, THANK YOU JOHNNY GALLAGHER for all your help with the forums!

Tip of the US hat to O Canada’s Richard Pelchat
An ATV Scene salute is in order for Richard Pelchat for winning the 2002 Canadian Pro ATV Championship.

“I want to thanks mom and dad for there support through ATV racing. There company Quero Metal is also responsible for my success. I also want to thanks Guy Diotte, because he trusted me going in this session, without Splash’n Dirt it would have been very difficult. See you at the Olympic Stadium for the Montreal Supercross!”
Name: Richard Pelchat
Age: 20
Class: ATV Pro
ATV: Honda 250R (250cc)
Hometown: Saint-Romuald, QC, Canada
Occupation: Mechanical engineering student. And ATV R&D for RP evolution
Sponsors: Splash’n Dirt, RP evolution, Quero Metal, ITP holeshot Mx, Maier,
DP brakes, Lavertu equipment, Hipertech, Motovan, ADM, Les structures
Pelco, Garage Réal Landry and SS performances.

Flat River Grand Prix
The Racers for Research, the promoters of the Flat River Grand Prix, have a signed jersey that was donated to them by Angela Moore to be sold to the highest bidder on E-Bay This was the jersey that Angela Moore wore at the GNC TT race at Ford Dodge, Iowa on June 28th and 29th of 2002. Angela finished first place in the women’s class that weekend. For 2002, Angela finished first place in the women’s class at the ATVA GNCC MX and TT series. She is a 3 time GNC women’s national champion. The jersey will be listed on E-Bay Tuesday evening November 19th for 7 days ending November 26th. Here’s the link to bid

The money raised by selling Angela’s jersey will be donated to the MARCH of DIMES by the Racers for Research. The Flat river Grand Prix is part of the Missouri Hare Scrambles Series. The Grand Prix is a two-day event, with ATVs and a poker run on Saturday. There will also be a peewee race this year on both Saturday and Sunday morning. Riders must bring in pledge money as their entry fee for the hare scramble or poker run. Prizes will also be given out for the amount of money raised by each rider along with the trophies for racing. This is the sixth year that Racers for Research has promoted the Flat River Grand Prix. Each year they have raised between $25,000 and $30,000 for the MARCH of DIMES! For more information about the event check there website at Racers4Research.com.

Underrated rider of the year – Ohio’s Darin Ogden
Unnoticeably Darin Ogden (FTZ/Dirt Track ATV) had one hell of a weekend at the Missouri GNC TT. So well that I thought I would point it out and give some fair warning to ’03 pro class TTers. Darin was on the podium four times out of five races that night. And had a respectable outing at the other rounds as well. In fact he was only two points out of a top five pro overall place and walloped everyone in the Pro Short Tracks to win the championship title. With that, he gets my vote for underrated rider of the year. Nice season Darin. He practically camped out at the podium that night in the show me state. Let us know if anyone has a picture of him on the podium.
Here are those Missouri finishes:
Short Track:
1st open pro oval
1st open pro am oval
4th 250 pro am
GNC TT:
1st Pro Am TT
2nd Pro class

E Mail of the Week
Hey John,
I’m glad to see that you are very busy and you’re having a great time at work. I really miss riding and racing and dream about possibly returning next year or the year after. I haven’t rode since Sept. 2001. I’m hoping that things change for our sport so riders can benefit financially from the ATV Industry. If you come around the northeast coast or hear anything interesting going on, let me know. Continue to raise hell out west!
Later,
Travis Spader

Quotes of the Week
“It’s not by chance that I eat all the right ingredients for good smelling fawts”, Boston, Mass D4 Freestyle Bombsquader, John Chandler on his secret weapons.

“Dear Coke, my name is Jaco Cob. I am a 4-time national nose picking champion. I am looking for 100 thousand dollars to help with my 2004 season. This is what Doug’s resume would look like to Coke because they don’t know what ATV racing is. Trust me these guys are doing all they can to get noticed. Its not that easy.” –Pulled from ATV Scene’s forums, ’97 Open A National Champion, Eric Dubb on the subject that ATV pro riders are whiners.

After the course that we had this weekend at Ironman, what was up there in the woods in Fort Dodge, IA was a super highway. — Brian Higgins on how tight it was at this year’s Ironman GNCC.

I finish up this edition from Harry McDermott’s desk at Trinity Racing in Anaheim, while the boys do some last minute tinkering on our race quad. They didn’t want me near the quad – something about bad luck?
Adios amigos!
JP

Pix of the Week

 

 

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