Honda’s Mike Childress and Steve Hengeveld enjoyed a flawless day to run away with the Terrible’s Town 250 in Pahrump, Nevada, round three of Best in the Desert’s Silver State Series. After drawing the first starting position, they remained in front for the entire 242 miles to win, literally, by miles on their Berkeley Honda-prepared, Precision Concepts-suspended XR650R, while crashes and DNFs took out several of the Pro teams that sought to challenge them.
Zip-Ty Racing Yamaha racers Ty Davis and Russell Pearson, for instance, ran second until a mechanical problem sidelined them about halfway through. That moved Red Bull KTM’s Chris Blais”who soloed his 525 XC as he usually does”into second place overall, but his ride came to an end when he crashed later in the race, knocking himself out.
At that point, Open Experts Max Eddy, Jr., Chris Ray and Jeff Trulove found themselves not only leading their class but running second overall on their MSS Racing KTM. They avoided any incidents to hang onto the spot, finishing in 4:48:29, unofficially.
The third motorcycle finisher was Four-stroke Pro-class winners Jeff Finerty and Robby Woods on their John Burr Cycles YZ450F in an unofficial 4:54:30.
Fourth overall went to Brian Melsheimer and Matthew Zang on their Temecula Motorsports CRF450X in 4:57:27, unofficially, while Over 40 Pro winners Scott Glimp and Ron A. Purvines rounded out the top five motorcycles on their Motorex 525 XC in 5:06:06, unofficially.
“It was a flawless day,” Childress said. “It was one of those days where nothing could go wrong.
“I pushed as hard as I could early in the morning without doing something stupid and crashing. We kept switching the bike between us and doing our jobs and both riding as hard as we could, and it paid off.”
And it paid off well, with Childress and Hengeveld splitting the $5000 cash bonus donated by the race sponsoring Herbst family. While it was Childress’ first Terrible’s Town overall, this marked Hengeveld’s third time to collect the bonus.
Unofficially, Childress and Hengeveld clocked a time of four hours and nine minutes.
