On the weekends he and older brother, David, went to the local Motorcycle Racing Association of Nevada (MRAN) off-road races with their father, Roger. Even mom, Marcia rode recreationally and they often hit the single tracks south of Boulder City in an area they called the Nelson Mountains. Every day, Danny came home from school, ate a sandwich, hopped on his Suzuki RM80 and went riding. Other than that, Daniel Bryan Hamel had complete freedom to explore endless acres of desert riding, which started at the end his family’s driveway in Boulder City, Nev. The Hamel family had a rule: the motorcycle had to be back in the garage before the sun went behind the McCullough Range. Danny Hamel at the Ocala, FL GNCC in 1994.One minute later, what the members of Team Green expected to be another punch through the Baja Peninsula, abruptly turned into the longest day of their lives. The crew was in a good mood, high fives were exchanged and the display of skill Hamel just shared with them, something he had done many times in his short career, led them all to say, “Did you see that?” Unfortunately, it was the last time anyone saw Danny Hamel drift through a corner.
Hamel already sat just 10 seconds behind the rider in front of him. With complete control, Hamel backed the half-liter bike into the corner, smoothly rolled on the throttle, floated from the inside to the outside, kissed the edge of the pavement near where Pyle and Bacon stood, tucked himself into the bars, grabbed gears and blazed out of town. The green machine went into a two-wheeled drift, the tires hazing the pavement. Pyle remembers the goose bumps on his arms as he watched, smiling. Pyle estimates Hamel came into the right-hander at about 40 miles per hour and marveled at how someone could carry such speed on a fresh set of Dunlop 695A tires. The sight of the young man finally caught up with the thunderous “BRAAAP” of his 500cc two-stroke Kawasaki. He blipped the throttle, tip-toed the bike on the wet pavement and didn’t seem in much of a rush to leave behind the last shred of civilization he would see for the rest of the day. They watched a Honda rider, the second competitor in the Pro Motorcycle class, come through the corner. Bacon and Pyle stood in the mist in front of a Gigante Supermercado on the outside of a 90 degree right hand turn that sent riders in a flat, straight line down Federal Highway 1, a four lane thruway, toward Maneadero. It was a moody, drizzly early June morning in Ensenada, Mexico, just past 6:00 a.m., neither dark nor completely light. Support personnel for Team Green Kawasaki, their next move was to take his teammates to the first rider exchange. Hamel started the 1995 Baja 500 as the third overall rider and Jim “Bones” Bacon and David Pyle went up course a few miles because they wanted to see Hamel one last time. He had a distinct method of riding a motorcycle that nobody could duplicate.
They heard him before they saw him that’s how it was with Danny Hamel.
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