Mak­ing the jour­ney to main­land Europe, team ATV World Yamaha trav­elled to France for the first of ten rounds in the 2008 EMX-UEM Euro­pean Quad Cham­pi­onships. With a gru­elling sched­ule ahead, John Mitchell is com­pet­ing to retain the cham­pi­onship while Paul Holmes looks to improve on his third place fin­ish last year.

Qual­i­fy­ing
Qual­i­fy­ing was a good chance to check the team Yamaha YFZ450’s were per­form­ing well and John was happy to take it steady and take fourth. Paul qual­i­fied in 11th. Work­ing along­side the ATV World mechan­ics was the devel­op­ment team from Elka Sus­pen­sion. Fred from Elka advised the rid­ers on the set up adjust­ment for their Elka Fac­tory Shocks which included; ground clear­ance, ride height and com­pres­sion adjustment.

Race One
John had an awe­some start and took the holeshot. He was lead­ing until Jere­mie War­nia past him and then Romain Cou­prie got through. John then over­took War­nia and went on to fin­ish in sec­ond place, 26 sec­onds ahead of third place on the last lap. Dur­ing the race, John landed dif­fi­cultly and injured his left elbow, leav­ing him in severe pain for the start of the sec­ond race.

Paul Holmes got caught up in the main pack at the start of the race but made some out­stand­ing passes to make three places on the first lap. He then went on to make a dou­ble pass com­ing out of a cor­ner in the sec­ond lap and con­tin­ued to bat­tle up to sixth place. Although Paul spun out after a crash with another rider, he main­tained his sixth posi­tion to the finish.

Race Two
In race two John was sec­ond into the first cor­ner how­ever the injury sus­tained to his elbow meant he was unable to push for the lead and he went on to take fourth place. Paul got a bet­ter start and in the open­ing laps he had worked his way up to sixth. Unfor­tu­nately Paul got tan­gled with another quad and lost time get­ting back on track how­ever he to man­aged to get back to 13 th and take vital points.

After round one of the cham­pi­onship, John Mitchell is in third place and is still in con­tention to retain his title. Paul Holmes is sev­enth over­all on 23 points. Both rid­ers and team are very pleased with these results.

John explained: “This was always going to be a tough track. It’s a fast pace and there are guys here who know it very well. I’m thrilled with my results here. The sec­ond place was in race one was a solid start. Going into race two with an injury and tak­ing fourth is great as I am very close to sec­ond place now in the over­all results and there are tracks through­out this cham­pi­onship where I will be stronger. The ATV World Yamaha YFZ450 was fault­less again. The team have done a fan­tas­tic job!”

The team return to the UK for this week­ends action in the ACU British MMX Quad Cham­pi­onship at Dean Moor – Hope to see you there!

LUCKY READER WINS A TRICKED-OUT, ELKA-EQUIPPED RHINO!

May 15, 2008, Red­lands, CA

We gave it away! Sorry that you didn’t get the call, but let me tell you about the call that we did make.  Greg Hines was at work in Colum­bia, TN, and it was just another Mon­day at the office. The phone rings and Char­lene and Mike from Side x Side Action Mag­a­zine are on the other end of the line

Greg still doesn’t know what is com­ing.  We find out that he just recently sub­scribed to the mag­a­zine while decid­ing what side x side to pur­chase in replace of his ATV.  As I remem­ber it, Char­lene and I laughed at the same time as we announced that we made his deci­sion for him…“Congratulations, You’ve won the Ulti­mate Rhino Giveaway!”

We received about six phone calls over the next cou­ple of days while he decided if he wanted to ship it or if he was going to jump in a plane and rent a box van to drive it home.  The final deci­sion: a one-way plane ticket and 1700 mile drive in a box van home!  Be sure to read more about Greg’s expe­ri­ence in the next issue of Side x Side Action Magazine!

Spe­cial Thanks to all of the Spon­sors of the Ulti­mate Rhino Give­away: Yamaha, OMF Per­for­mance Prod­ucts, Maxxis Tires, Elka Sus­pen­sion, Mas­ter­craft Seats, Pro Armor, Dylan Motor­sports, Lion Cart, Extreme Rhino Motor­sports, Baja Designs, Trail Armor, and Warn.

–
Mike Lasher
Man­ag­ing Editor

PGI Media
Sand Addic­tion Mag­a­zine
Side X Side Action Magazine

Once again, Elka rid­ers has climbed on the podium at the “12 Heures d’Endurance de la Tuque”, a gru­el­ing endurance race in Que­bec. The gen­eral “pro” class podium was full of Elka rid­ers, with Jas­min Plante and his team­mates from Ulti­mate Yamaha Toy­ota Team on the top step. They com­pleted 166 laps in 12 hours, 8 min­utes and 49 sec­onds on a very rough course. Team Meu­nier fin­ished in sec­ond place with 159 laps, less than 2 min­utes behind. Team Moto Cen­tre St-Hyacinthe got third with 158 laps.

Click here or the image below for a video of the event and com­plete report (French):

Click here for full results by class (ATV).

TEAM KTM/ELKA EASILY WINS THE ENDUROCROSS

The motocross por­tion of the event, called the Enduro­cross, was also won by the Elka rid­ers from Team KTM/Elka. The team com­pleted 63 laps in 737 min­utes to eas­ily take the win aboard their KTM bike with Elka mod­i­fied sus­pen­sion and steer­ing damper.

Click here for report (French).

CHEVROT / BETEILLE 2nd — MARTIN / KRAFT AT THE TOP

For the sec­ond year , a team of 120 peo­ples com­posed of dif­fer­ent asso­ci­a­tions coor­do­nated by Pas­cal Aflatet, were on the case since many weeks to offer a great event in a clas­si­fied site NATURA 2000, for a 500km race.

At the start, 100 teams were present, includ­ing 22 POLARIS ATV’s. Offi­cial pilots, Thierry Chevrot was team­ing with Rémi Béteille (Quad Plus—winner of the Xtrem Indoor quad 2x4 in 2007), and Ade­line Mar­tin was asso­ci­ated to Betty Kraft, both team on OUTLAW 525S.

Since the start, Chevrot/Béteille had to face a tire issue and they lost few min­utes that will be dif­fi­cult to recover. They will be quickly back in the lead­ing teams, to keep the sec­ond posi­tion all along the race, tak­ing some­times the lead with the game of the pit stops. They bat­tled until the end and finally fin­ished sec­ond just few min­utes behind, after nearly 10 hours of race.

The other great result is com­ing from the women team, with Ade­line Mar­tin / Betty Kraft who did a a fan­tas­tic race by win­ning the women cat­e­gory and fin­ish­ing 13th over­all. Con­grat­u­la­tions ladies!

Finally, we can not end up this resume with­out few words of Pierre Audoin, Sales and Rac­ing Man­ager for POLARIS France. He had a ter­ri­ble acci­dent dur­ing the race and has been heli­ported to the hos­pi­tal of Pau where he had a seri­ous surgery. Now he is out of dan­ger and he is doing way bet­ter. He is using this oppor­tu­nity to thank all the mes­sages he get and he will give some news soon. We also would like
to thank the pro­moter and his team for the incred­i­ble job they have done around this acci­dent. Tim­ing
was crit­i­cal. Thanks to all the marshalls !

Elka rider Ben Milot won the last round of the X Rider last sat­ur­day in Mazat­lan Mexico.

Ben’s com­ments: «The event has been great, I man­aged to beat Chuck Caruthers in the last elim­i­na­tion so I was pumped ! Thanks to all my spon­sors Suzuki, Base Energy, Coor’s Light, Troy Lee Designs, Oak­ley, PSL, Six
Six One, Mada, Etnies, Radio Energie, Kim­pex, Ipone, Ogio, FMF and Elka Suspension.»

May 1, 2008 4:04pm

For the first race of the sea­son, MX101 Yamaha Canada Racing’s 5 mem­ber team had huge suc­cess at the Motomas­ters, Mex­ico, NY opener! New MX101 Team mem­ber Dylan Wright felt right at home after mak­ing the switch to Yamaha for 2008. Dylan’s YZ85 kept him in front of a hard charg­ing Dan Netti of NY, for the win in the Junior 85 class both Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. The team’s senior 85 rider Bradley Dool had a bat­tle of his own with NY’s Sean Bal­lard as the two put on a great show bat­tling bar to bar for the Mex­ico crowd. Brad edged out Sean for the win both days. Brad also con­tin­ued the Iron­man tra­di­tion with a great show­ing in Super­mini with a 3rd, and in School­boy with a 5th.

Also new to the team in 2008, Shawn Robin­son (Elka rider) made his Pro debut fin­ish­ing 2/4 for 3rd over­all behind Colton Har­ri­son (Elka rider) and last week­ends AMA Super­cross holeshot win­ner Bobby Kiniry. Kevin Tyler broke in his new YZ125 in the Plus 25 Expert class fin­ish­ing the day with 3/5 for 5th over­all. Round­ing out the Teams results was Kevin’s son Mitch in the 4–6 class fin­ish­ing with 3/4 moto scores and tak­ing fourth overall.

Other notable east­ern rid­ers mak­ing the trip to Motomas­ters, was Alex Gau­thier (Elka rider) win­ning the open Expert Class, Yan Gen­dron (Elka rider) win­ning the Plus 25 Ama­teur, Mikael Char­ron win­ning the 65cc 10–11 class, Austin Squires fin­ish­ing 2nd in the 65cc 7–9 class, Nick Giles with a 3rd over­all in the 50cc 7–8 and Brett “Holeshot” Cor­lyon tak­ing 3rd over­all in his Inter­me­di­ate debut!

Con­grat­u­la­tions all of the east­ern rid­ers on their excel­lent per­for­mance in round one of the Inter­na­tional IRONMAN of Sand Series

Paul Holmes was show­ing his cham­pion cre­den­tials this bank hol­i­day week­end with two wins at rounds four and five of the IOPD British Quad-X Cham­pi­onship, strength­en­ing his lead at the top.

The championship’s fourth and fifth rounds took place at the Fox­holes track in Wilt­shire. Held over the bank hol­i­day, round four took place on the Sun­day and started well for Paul Holmes as he qual­i­fied in first place by over two seconds!

In race one Paul started well but suf­fered a tyre punc­ture. He nursed his quad round the track and held off the com­pe­ti­tion to fin­ish in sec­ond place. Race two saw Paul take the holeshot and dom­i­nate through­out the race, win­ning and fin­ish­ing first over­all in round four.

On the bank hol­i­day Mon­day, Paul pow­ered from fourth to sec­ond place in race one, clos­ing within a sec­ond on the lead. He then took the holeshot in race two. Never look­ing back, Paul steered his ATV World Yamaha YFZ450 to a com­fort­able first place, fin­ish­ing with a 15 sec­ond lead.

Paul said: “I’m really pleased with my results so far this sea­son. I’m up against the best UK rid­ers and get­ting podium places week in, week out. I have been putting the hours in at the gym and feel fit­ter than ever! It really makes a dif­fer­ence, par­tic­u­larly on the rough tracks. The ATV World Yamaha YFZ450 has been superb. It’s been so well devel­oped for 2008 – I can’t fault it! The boys at ATV World have done a fan­tas­tic job.”

Paul Holmes has now won over­all at every IOPD British Quad-X Cham­pi­onship round, firmly plac­ing him at the top of the leader board.

Next rac­ing for Team ATV World Yamaha will be the EMX Quad Euro­pean Cham­pi­onship round one on the 11 th May 2008. Held at the famous MX track in Brou, France. With ATV World Yamaha rider John Mitchell keen to retain his Euro­pean title, Paul Holmes look­ing to improve on his third place in last years com­pe­ti­tion and Sean Goss enter­ing for the first time, it’s going to be an excit­ing event!

Team ATV World Yamaha got back to win­ning ways this week­end with some impres­sive rid­ing and solid results. Hav­ing made a dif­fi­cult start to the cham­pi­onship in the first round, John Mitchell and Paul Holmes dis­played true cham­pion deter­mi­na­tion as they scored vital points at the Desert­martin track, John win­ning race two by a record beat­ing 1min 40 and Paul fin­ish­ing in sec­ond overall!

John Mitchell qual­i­fied strongly in sec­ond place with Paul a close fifth giv­ing them both good start posi­tions for race one. Paul was eighth off the line around the first cor­ner. He then began catch­ing and pass­ing up to third place. John strug­gled off the line, get­ting bogged down and found him­self in last place. He then had to stop to make an emer­gency wiring repair after a freak inci­dent by which a stone broke his kill switch where it was con­nected to the quad and switched off the engine! Paul fin­ished com­fort­ably in third, just behind Wayne Tyson and Paul Win­row. John man­aged to rewire his quad to get the engine started and com­pleted the race in 15th.

After some minor adjust­ments to his quad set-up, John started race two deter­mined to get his cham­pi­onship back on track. Bat­tling with Paul Win­row for the Holeshot, John quickly pulled into the lead and cre­ated an incred­i­ble 1min 40 sec gap from sec­ond place rider Paul Win­row. John lapped up to sev­enth place and had closed in all over the back of Ricky Tordoff.

Paul Holmes had another superb ride and took fifth place, fin­ish­ing sec­ond over­all on the day. This takes Paul into third place over­all in the cham­pi­onships and he now leads the Under 21 Championship.

ATV World Yamaha team man­ager Mar­tin Fletcher

On Paul Homes: “Paul Holmes is hav­ing an incred­i­ble third sea­son rac­ing quads. Very rarely do you see such young tal­ent able to take on the big boys and beat them week in, week out. Paul goes from strength to strength and has not only done well in the British but is lead­ing the Under 21 and lead­ing the IOPD cham­pi­onship too.”

On John Mitchell: “I have never seen a rock break a kill switch like that, it’s just ter­ri­ble luck. As for John’s sec­ond race today, it was unbe­liev­able! As far as records go, John’s 1min 40sec lead is a record beater! He won here in 2007, again over Paul Win­row only this time his lead was three times big­ger than last year. John is back to his win­ning ways.”

On the ATV World Yamaha YFZ450 : The ATV World Yamaha YFZ450 has per­formed well in these tough con­di­tions. The new Dun­can Rac­ing Engine kit has increased the bikes over­all per­for­mance from 2007. Elka have devel­oped the new Elka Fac­tory Shocks that works bet­ter than ever! The all new Gold­speed MXF tyres have given the ATV World rid­ers an added edge in cor­ner­ing and braking.

There was mixed suc­cess for other ATV World spon­sored rid­ers with Sean Goss hav­ing an up and down day. He showed his capa­bil­i­ties and race pace with a solid per­for­mance in race two. Dean Thomp­son and Josh Bar­rett rode in the British Sup­ports and showed excel­lent poten­tial for the future with mature rid­ing and fan­tas­tic skill.

With both John and Paul leav­ing Desert­martin with strong results, they move back into con­tention for the cham­pi­onship. Round three of the 2008 ACU British MMX Quad Cham­pi­onship is on the 18 th May at Dean Moor, Cum­bria. Hope to see you there.

The Loretta Lynn’s GNCC Race Report
Hur­ri­cane Mills, Ten­nessee, April 26, 2008

William Yok­ley fin­ished 4th Over­all today at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch.  There were 257 total entries with 23 XC1 Pro Rid­ers.  Team Rider Mark Not­man fin­ished 23rd Over­all and 10th in the 31 rider XC2 Pro Am Class.

We raced today at his­toric Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in scenic Ten­nessee.  This is the old­est race on the GNCC cir­cuit, and draws a huge crowd every year.  The soil is sandy with sec­tions of small shale rock which makes for a very phys­i­cally demand­ing whooped out course.  The weather was per­fect for the race with cool tem­per­a­tures and a few rain show­ers the night before.

I was look­ing for­ward to a good start, but that wasn’t the case when my bike failed to crank when the offi­cial threw the flag.  I was next to last off the line, and I knew I had to ride smart and fast to make some­thing hap­pen.  I was able to pass a few rid­ers as we made our way around the famed National level motocross track, and was able to pick my way by some oth­ers once we got into the woods.  When I came through the scor­ing bar­rels on the first lap, I was in 5th place, and things were start­ing to look up.  On the 2nd lap, I was passed by Adam McGill and Brian Cook; Adam stretched out some dis­tance from Brian and me, but we held a nice strong pace through­out the day.

On the 3rd lap, we had got­ten a lit­tle closer to one another to begin a pretty decent bat­tle.  At one point, I looked up to see a bunch of rid­ers in front of us mov­ing pretty good, and I thought we had our work cut out for us to get around these lapped rid­ers.  I was sur­prised to find out that it was the lead­ers instead of the lap­pers!  It’s always a plus to look up and see the lead pack that you’ve been chas­ing all day.  Going into the 4th and final lap, the top 7 rid­ers were nose to tail.

I stopped to get some fresh gog­gles as mine were out of tear offs head­ing into the final lap.  I caught up to Cook again, and we bat­tled it out.  I was right on his bumper going up a steep hill when I saw a lap­per in front of us, think­ing to myself to take another line in case the rider stalled or got stuck.  I didn’t, and wouldn’t you know, he stalled and there sat all three of us stuck on this hill.  I beat myself up a lit­tle for not tak­ing the other line because that would have put me in 3rd place.  The KTM guys had a bad run of luck on the last lap with motor trou­ble of some sort, and dropped out of the top 10.  That didn’t hurt my feel­ings though because I came into the fin­ish bar­rels in 4th place for the day!

My team­mate Mark Not­man got off to a slow start also as his bike did not fire on the first kick, leav­ing him last going into the woods.  Mark passed a lot of rid­ers and was 12th going into the 2nd lap.  He had a nice rhythm going and made his way up to 8th place going into the last lap.  About 2 miles from the fin­ish, while try­ing to pass for another posi­tion, he hit a tree pretty hard with the rear wheel.  The impact knocked him and his seat off, as well as injur­ing his leg.  He put the seat back on and remounted to fin­ish the lap out in 10th place.  Even though Mark was dis­ap­pointed, he had a good points day and sits in 6th place in the Pro Am Class.

This was a tough day as the track became extremely rough and whooped out, but I was pleased how Mark and I rode.  I want to thank all my spon­sors for help­ing make things pos­si­ble as usual.  Our team also received great sup­port from the National Guard Recruiters and mem­bers, we really appre­ci­ate their involve­ment.  We move on to Mill­field Ohio in 2 weeks, see you there!

Yok­ley Rac­ing Team Spon­sors are:  The Army National Guard, Rocky Moun­tain ATV, Polaris Indus­tries, ITP Tires, Elka Sus­pen­sion, Roll Design, HMF Exhaust Sys­tems, IMS/Roll, Tire Balls, Andrews Cycle, Dou­glas Wheel Tech­nol­ogy, Bald­win Motor­sports, CGR, O’Neal Cloth­ing, Pano­lin Lubri­cants, IMS, Hin­son, 317 Graph­ics, Intense Fab­ri­ca­tion & Design, Tsub­aki Chains, Hard­kor, Shoei Hel­mets, Axcal­ibar Axles, Stream­line, Pow­er­madd, Moto Pro Train­ing and KG Clutch Factory.

Elka On Top, with two Wins in Two Races

The three Super­bike rid­ers of the “Junior Team Suzuki France” were loaded for bear when they arrived in the Bor­deaux wine coun­try of South West­ern France for the sec­ond round of the French Super­bike Championship.  

Two sunny days of rac­ing yielded four podium fin­ishes in two races. Bet­ter yet, the three Suzuki GSX-R1000 rid­ers, Guil­laume Diet­rich, Lucas De Car­o­lis and Emeric Jonchiere, now occupy the top three posi­tions of the 2008 Super­bike Cham­pi­onship with two of the seven week-end series in the books.

After fin­ish­ing first and sec­ond in the Super­stock class (Fifth and ninth over­all) in the pre­vi­ous weekend’s Le Mans 24 Hours race, round 1 of the World Endurance Cham­pi­onship, the team had the momen­tum and knowl­edge to max­i­mize per­for­mance of the three GSX-R1000 machines for the tight, bumpy track. Eamonn Cleere, the Tech2000 sus­pen­sion and geom­e­try spe­cial­ist, gave the rid­ers exactly the han­dling they needed to fin­ish up front and build upon their lead in the Championship.

The next round will take place in Le Vigeant (Cen­tral France) on May 24 and 25.