Francisco Arredondo and Shane Esposito win Best in the Desert’s Vegas to Reno classic, but Max Eddy Jr.’s solo third keeps THR in the points lead.
Story and Photos By Mark Kariya
What’s a defending champion to do?
Ricky Brabec won Best in the Desert’s American Off-road Racing Series championship last year with teammate Robby Bell and had the points lead through the first three rounds of the 2015 series, but going into round four this year–the 19th Annual General Tire Vegas to Reno, presented by Fox–Brabec and Bell were injured and couldn’t ride.
Fortunately for Brabec, there is a provision in the BITD rulebook that permits injured Riders of Record (Brabec, in this case) to have a substitute step in. Enter Max Eddy, Jr. All Eddy Jr. had to do was complete the 545 miles from Beatty (some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas), Nevada, to Dayton (south of Reno). By himself.
“Me and Justin [Morgan] had plans of racing one of THR [Motorsports’] bikes up until about six or seven days before the race,” Eddy explained. “Ricky pretty much called and asked if I would ride his bike for him to keep him in the points. I said, ‘Yeah, sure!’ He goes, ‘If we finish sixth, we’ll still walk away leading the points.’ So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try!’”
Against the odds, Eddy more than held his own. Second off the line behind the David Pearson/Taylor Stevens team (each Pro team starting one minute apart, Experts and Amateur teams starting at 30-second intervals), Eddy actually fought for the lead through much of the race. When Stevens crashed, suffering a badly broken femur and other injuries about 80 miles into the race, it took that team out of the running, leaving Eddy, Burson/Pearson and the Bremen Racing Honda pair of Francisco Arredondo and former winner Shane Esposito to battle it out for the win.
Eddy went to the front by the time they hit pit five, 191 miles into the race, riding as if it was any other race.
“I just kind of rode my normal pace,” he said. “I felt good up until about the 400-mile marker, then the wrist that I broke at San Felipe started getting real sore on me and hurting and stuff, and I had to back her down. It was when I was leading the race that it started getting real sore, so maybe [Race Mile] 350 or something like that. “I said, ‘You know what? I’m just going to back it down and get to the finish line. If I finish top three I’ll be happy.’ That’s pretty much what I did: I backed her down a little bit and didn’t try to race with Shane or Nick [when they passed].”
Both the Honda and the Beta ended up passing Eddy, so the race for the lead being pared to those two teams until a freak issue in the pits, which actually stemmed from a mistake in race prep by the Beta team well before the race began, let Esposito (who rode about 500 of the 545 miles) get away.
“At pit 10 (Mina at mile 354), Axel came in about 30 seconds, 45 seconds behind Shane,” Burson shared. “But then at pit 10, we decided because we had a decent lead [over Eddy in third] we would do a [rear] wheel change and our sprocket on our race bike was stamped as a 50-[tooth] and that’s what we were supposed to run, but it was actually a 51! So, when we went to put our spare wheel on, we had to adjust the chain. At the time, we didn’t know what was going on! We thought the chain stretched. We were all pretty much freaking out, but it pretty much cost us like 3 minutes where a [normal] wheel change should’ve only cost us a minute.
“I caught back up to where I could see Shane’s dust, then–I don’t know–he just got a second wind or something,” Burson continued. “It got super-sketchy with all the rain ruts and everything and he just went fast.”
Esposito sped away to win the biggest race on the BITD calendar with more than 335 teams entered, completing the long day in 9 hours, 20 minutes and 29 seconds, Burson/Pearson not far off in 9:23:23. Eddy held on for a solid third in a remarkable 9:52:17 solo effort, while Morgan also soloed, riding his personal DP Racing YZ450F to fourth overall bike in 10:15:41. (Both he and Burson had stopped to assist the injured Stevens, Morgan then sending Burson to notify BITD officials until other riders came along.)
Steve Hengeveld, another former winner, teamed up with his 17-year-old son, Clay, to win 250cc Pro and claim fifth overall in 10:21:19 aboard their Northland Motorsports Honda CRF250X. The team of Ricky Dahlberg, Adam Thissen and Kyle Townsend won the Open Expert class. Chris Brown and Gabe Guerin won the Over 30 Pro class.
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