Features

Desert Vipers GP 1998

18th Annual Desert Vipers Adelanto Grand Prix : THE BIGGEST RACE IN THE US

By Rick Sieman

Some of the streets in the town of Adelanto are blocked off from normal traffic flow and converted into part of a race track during the first weekend of February each year. Cool! Click here for the BIG picture!

 

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A real Grand Prix should have a little bit of everything thrown in to challenge the riders. The Grand Prix concept was started in Southern California's AMA District 37 to give a chance for all the different types of competition riders to get together and compete on the same track.

When the idea started, SoCal was loaded with dirt track and scrambles riders, thousands of desert racers, hundreds of enduro competitors and countless motocrossers.

A good start was important; if you got to the end of the paved section first, you could toss dirt in the face of the pack. Click Here to view a larger, 768x293 pixel version.

A proper GP course, then, should have plenty of smooth fast sections for the dirt trackers, some twisty fire roads for the TT guys, plenty of desert sand, some paved roads and a motocross track with bumps and jumps.

If you get all of these ingredients done just right, you end up with what the Desert Vipers have been doing for almost two decades: a great race.

Is this just an opinion of mine? Well, consider that about ten days before the race, the Desert Vipers had received over 2300 pre-entries! This, unless there's a race being held in secret somewhere, is easily the race with the most entries in the US, period.

Then when you consider that anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 spectators show up to enjoy the racing, you end up with a class race.

A massive crowd of spectators showed up both days. Here's how some of the more inventive fans carried their beer supply around the track. Yep, that stroller is loaded with six-packs and coolers. Kitchy-koo and burp. Click Here to view a larger, 367x246 pixel version.

Why the disparity in the numbers? Well, it all depends on the weather. If the sun is shining, 75,000 plus show up. If it's cold, windy and miserable, about 50,000 brave souls will line the fences.

Which begs the question: why, oh why, do the Desert Vipers insist on holding their GP on the first weekend of February? If there's one time during the year when you are guaranteed lousy weather, this is it. In fact, in the last half-dozen years, I can only recall one warm sunny day. If the Vipers would reschedule their great event to April or May, chances are the crowd would double.

The small town of Adelanto loves this event! All three motels fill up with reservations a month before the race, and on race weekend, the local restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores do a land-office business. However, unlike some other towns that host races, Adelanto doesn't jack the prices up.

THE FORMAT
The D.V.G.P. is the first event in a six race series billed as the Big 6 Grand Prix Series. The best five finishes (in each class) out of the five races count toward points for the G.P. championship. You have to be an AMA member ($29 for the year) and a District 37 card-carrier ($20) to race. While District 37 does a good solid job on holding races, the fact that you have to become an AMA member rankles this writer. This means that every month, like the plague, the worst motorcycle magazine ever made, American Motorcyclist, will arrive in your mail box.

Clubs participating in the series are strong ones that have been around for a while. Here's the schedule and the participants:

DESERT VIPERS ... Jan. 31/Feb1. Adelanto

PRAIRIE DOGS ... Feb. 29/Mar. 1 Glen Helen Raceway

HILLTOPPERS ... Apr. 4/Apr. 5 29 Palms

SHAMROCKS ... Oct. 3/Oct. 4 LA County Raceway

VIEWFINDERS ... Oct. 3./Oct. 4 Glen Helen Raceway

PROSPECTORS ... Oct. 31/Nov. 1 Gorman

On Saturday, the following classes race:
8:00 UNCLASSIFIED
9:15 SENIOR/MAGNUM/SUPER SENIOR
10:30 VETERAN EXPERT/AMATEUR
11:45 0-175cc/WOMEN/MINI
2:15 PRO RACE - ALL CLASSES

Sunday offers this line up:
8:00 VINTAGE/CLASSIC/SIDEHACK
9:15 KIDS/PEEWEE EVENT
10:00 DUAL SPORT (STREET LEGAL)/FOUR-STROKE CLASS
11:15 250cc CLASS - ALL SKILL LEVELS
12:30 QUADS
1:45 OPEN CLASS - ALL SKILL LEVELS

A bit of explanation is in order for those unfamiliar with District 37 Grand Prix rules. That Saturday morning 8:00 UNCLASSIFIED race is nothing more than a chance for the riders to familiarize themselves with the course. Since the entry fees are reasonable, many of the serious racers enter this class, but don't worry about how they finish. They just want to find the good lines, learn the jumps and get loosened up.

Under D-37 Grand Prix rules, there is no practice allowed. The clubs use this UNCLASSIFIED event to make some extra money. And when you see up to 200 riders on the line for this event at thirty bucks a pop, that adds up to $6000 in the club's coffers. Not too shabby.

However, the course riding rule has been badly abused as of late. Riders have been putting an enduro jacket over their riding gear, and slipping on the course during an event, just to get in a lap or two. Since most of these abusers are fast pros who will be running up front, eyes are turned the other way.

A bit of re-shuffling of the event's scheduling should be considered by the club. One of the most popular events is the Vintage/Classic/Sidehack class, but it always runs at 8:00 on Sunday morning well before the bulk of the crowd shows up.

During two of the events, the course is changed. For safety,

Serious racer: this little guy patiently waits for his shot at a trophy. Click Here to view a larger, 599x483 pixel version.

the Kids/PeeWee race is shortened to a half-hour, rather than the full hour everyone runs, and the course is dramatically reduced in length, so the little racers are in sight most of the time. Good move.

Easily the biggest crowd pleaser, the Pee Wee-Mini event had parents nervous as cats and the kids calm. Click Here to view a larger, 475x521 pixel version.

Also, the Vintage/Classic course is altered from the full 12 mile course, to one that's a little over five miles in length. Again, the racer promoters know that bikes a quarter-century old are not the most reliable machines in the world.

RACE NOTES
With the threat of El Nino and Global Warming hanging over us, the weekend was cold and windy, with the sun appearing only fleetingly. Most of the time, heavy black clouds scudded over head, but only a few drops fell during the scheduled events. People bundled up and drank a lot of hot coffee.

Sponsor support was high, and Kawasaki, KTM, ATK, Yamaha and Suzuki had big displays of new and race bikes for the fans to see.

Kawasaki had a huge display at Adelanto. Too bad they didn't have Ty Davis still riding for them. Click Here to view a larger, 681x492 pixel version.

Honda was strangely absent, even though they fielded some of their best desert racers on the now venerable XRs.

Yes, Bunky, the XRs are now looking very long in the tooth. All of the attention was focused on the new Yamaha YZ-400 four stroke and the various KTM four-stroke offerings.

Major aftermarket companies were at Adelanto in full force,

IMS fielded a full team of racers headed by Mike Healey. It seemed like 90 percent of the racers at Adelanto were running IMS big tanks, which brought smiles to IMS boss, C.H. Wheat. Click Here to view a larger, 711x481 pixel version.

with products on display. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, in spite of the less than ideal weather. As with previous years, a local radio station played music way too loud both days, irritating spectators. We saw rocks being tossed at the speakers. While race fans like music as much as anybody else, ear shattering music levels that drown out the sound of booming four strokes racing,is just too much.

The big gun at Adelanto was Ty Davis,

Ty Davis won three classes easily on his new Yamahas. During most of the weekend, the skies were heavy looking and threatening rain. Click Here to view a larger, 704x598 pixel version.

who had just switched from years with Kawasaki, to a ride with Montclair Yamaha. It's still unclear why the deal with Team Green fell through, but insiders say it was simply a lack of dollars offered by Kawasaki. Davis almost worked out a deal with KTM, but secrecy surrounds why that didn't work out.

In his first race ever, a regular desert event, Davis was supposed to race the YZ-250, but liked the four-stroke so much that he chose to race that instead. In spite of a five-kick start and eating dust for most of the race, he nailed down the overall, passing over 60 riders in the process.

At Adelanto, he would have a chance to race both the YZ-250 and the YZ-400F in different classes, as well as a YZ-125. When the smoke cleared (there was no dust to speak of), Davis nailed down wins in the 125, 250 and Four-Stroke classes. Johnny Campbell won the Unclassified and the Pro event on his XR-600 Honda, but was lucky to do so.

Campbell led the Pro event on the first lap, with Davis right on his tail. Even though the XR-600 made a lot of noise, the YZ 250 that Davis was riding worked better, and he passed Campbell on lap two, and pulled cleanly away. It not only looked like Davis would dominate this event, but crusty old Senior rider, Rex Staten, was very close to passing Campbell. Noted Rocket Rex: "Another half lap or so and I would have had him easy. He was getting tired; I could see that, and I was right on his tail."

But the racing gods can be cruel. With a half lap to go, Davis seized and Campbell inherited the lead. Instead of chasing a blue bike now, all he had to do was hold off the charging gray beard, Rex Staten.

The problem Davis had was costly, as the Desert Vipers offered a $6000 purse, plus 75% of the entry fee. This made for a serious payday, more than most supercross races pay.

He made up for it with wins in the 125, 250 and four-stroke classes. In the combined Four-stroke/Dual Sport Class, Davis simply disappeared from the crowd. By lap two, he was jumping a solid 140 feet over the grandstand triples, landing on the flat ground. By lap three, he was waving to the cheering crowd while pulling off the blood-curdling jumps. Nobody else was evenclose, and Johnny Campbell might as well have been in another area code for all the pressure he applied to the flying YZ four stroke.

Special mention must be made of Rex Staten. Not only did this iron man compete in a bunch of classes, he utterly dominated the Senior and Classic events. In the Vintage/Classic class, Rex raced a 1980 YZ-465 that looked better than the day it came out of the factory. All the aluminum parts were buffed to a high gloss, the paint job was perfect and the bike barked!

Rex Staten dominated the Classic event with his 1980 Yamaha YZ-465. He noted that he could turn lap times almost as fast as the modern bikes with t his old iron. Click Here to view a larger, 512x471 pixel version.

We talked with Rex after his win, and he told us: "The bike is plenty fast. Heck, I could have ridden it to an easy win in the Senior event instead of my KX-500. It feels a lot stiffer and harsher than my modern Kawasaki, but it actually turns easier than a modern bike. And for a 1980 model, the brakes actually work."

We asked Rex how the old YZ 465 would have worked against the modern bikes. He scratched his chin thoughtfully: "Tell you what. I think it might be 10 seconds a lap slower at the most. It does take more energy to ride, but it's competitive."

Your writer competed in the same race that Rex rode, and if you want to find out about the gruesome results, you'll have to suffer through my Checkpoint column this month.

All things considered, the Vipers once again pulled off a class event. You riders from other states ought to consider making the trek to the Mojave desert to try this classic, at least once.

And if you do, bring a few bikes and race in several classes. Just make sure you're in some kind of shape, and don't mind high speeds, big jumps, water holes, a spectacular track and more spectators than a Supercross race.

 

With 2300 plus racers showing up, some of the classes were literally overflowing and backed up for rows and rows and... Click Here to view a larger, 700x484 pixel version.

 

(Results will be up soon!)