Features

Johnny Campbell Interview

SO, HOW'D YOU GET TO BE SO FAST?

By Rick Sieman

He's six feet tall, 180 pounds, and looks like he should be just about ready to graduate from college and go to law school, or maybe start working for Microsoft. You tend to picture Baja 1000 winners as wild-eyed, longhaired crazies and Johnny Campbell just doesn’t fit that picture at all.

He’s quiet, mellow and very easy-going. In fact, to get him to talk about his accomplishments was not easy. He seemed embarrassed when I asked about all those wins in the hostile terrain of Mexico. But his record is impossible to ignore.

Consider: He won the Baja 1000 in 1997 (with Tim Staab and Gred Bringle) and backed it up with another win in ’98, this one with Jimmy Lewis. And 1999 wasn’t too shabby. He won both the Baja 500 and the Baja 1000 (again, teamed with Staab) with a solid 11-minute margin over the other Honda XR650 team entry.

This year, Campbell will race the SCORE events, Best In The Desert Series, and selected special races, like the Desert Vipers GP.

Who does he consider his toughest competitor? Right now, notes JC, Ty Davis is the man to beat.

But if the course is ultra-high speed with lots of slippery graded roads, he feels that the Yamaha four-stroke ridden by Davis cannot possibly hang with his XR650R. "When I get to the slick, no-traction, high-speed stuff, my bike just shines! It’s almost pure magic under these conditions. When I get to areas with big whoops, or G-out sections, Davis will have a slight edge on me there. But give me some room to let the Honda have its head, and I don’t think there’s another bike out there that can run with it."

Campbell misses the days when Kawasaki was heavily involved with Baja racing: "When Big Green was running, they were the team to beat. They had plenty of fast riders and lots of guys on the KX-500s, and excellent pits. Now the only chance I get to go against them is in the Nevada races. When Danny got killed, they pulled out of Baja racing. Maybe they’ll come back someday. But if they do, we’ve got the bike now to give their bike fits."

Campbell genuinely likes the new machines: "We had pretty much run out of what we could do to the old XR600. We modified and stretched it to the limits. The 628 that I ran in ’98 had a whole bunch of work done to it to make it fast and reliable, and the new stock bike is actually faster than that bike. Actually, the new 650 is not highly modified. There’s a whole lot left in there if we need it."

He started out racing motocross, after giving up on team sports as frustrating, and was a Beginner in 1984, a Novice in ’85, an Amateur in ’86 and turned Expert in 1987. His Dad bought him a Honda CR-250 then, and he decided to get serious and try to make a career of it.

When he started racing Grand Prix stuff, he realized that his days of hanging around an MX track all day for two 15-minute motos were over. The transition to desert racing was not easy, as he didn’t know how to read the terrain very well, and he felt much more at home on the GP tracks, as you got to know the course after a lap or two.

In 1991, he made the full effort to race in the Baja series, with Dave Donatoni, Craig Adams and Randy Morales, on a CR-250. They played bridesmaid to the Kawasakis all year and struggled with numerous small time-consuming problems.

In ’92 he started riding XR four-strokes in District 37 races with some small help from Honda, and by ’93, quit riding two-strokes, period. It took a good six months to adjust to the four-strokes, but he soon started winning the GPs on the big singles.

In 1994, he ran the entire SCORE series on an XR and capped off the year with a second place at the 2000 mile Nevada rally, which won him $6500 cash and a contract with Honda for the rest of the year.

Does this look like the face of a Baja dominator? Naw! Don’t let the pleasant looks fool you, especially if you’re competing against him.

He received lots of help and encouragement from Bruce Ogilvie and started to work with Bruce, testing and developing the XRs, and racing them, as well.

Now, he’s an important part of Team Honda and plans to put and keep the XRs at the helm of off-road racing.

But what makes him so fast?

Johnny told us that hard work and sheer determination are much more important than natural talent and great reflexes. He says that an average rider who works seriously hard can beat a fast rider who doesn’t train.

To that end, he treats his racing with a full professional approach. He has a personal trainer, spends hours on a mountain bike, watches his diet and spends countless hours testing and riding bikes.

He uses the same approach when looking for a partner for those long distance Baja races. While there are plenty of rocket-fast racers out there, willing to leave it on full throttle until they win or crash, Campbell wants co-riders who are smart, dedicated and willing to work as hard as he does.

It’s obvious that this approach works, as his record is excellent and growing.

And, with the biggest prize of all dangling in front of him, Johnny Campbell has his sights set on winning the Baja 2000.

Not just in his class, but overall.

What will it take?

"I’m going to work harder than ever to get ready for this one. Real hard."

Anybody foolish enough to bet against Campbell and his XR650R in the Baja 2000 this year?