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eROA DRACE e AMA Superbike National Championship: Round 6 would be no keeping him o ut of the actio n. T he threat of rai n was cons ta nt throu gh out the weekend, with Saturday 's AMA/CCS end ura nce race held in a rai nstorm. Altho ug h Su nday's weather was somewha t gloo my, the ra in stayed away and racing was held on a dry track. Heats Doug Chandler won his fourth Superbike National of the season at Mid·Ohio to increase his point lead to 32. Chandler's teammate Scott Russell was equally impressive as he came from the 38th starting position to finish second. Russell is now third in the championship. C le hand rwins, Russell impresses at Mid-Ohio By Paul Carruthers Photos by Larry Lawrence LEXINGTON, OH, AUG. 5 ne from the front, one from the back. T eam Muzzy Kawasaki riders Doug Chandler and Scott Russell dominated the Wiseco 100 at' the MidOhio Sports Car Course with Chandler winning from the pol e po sition and Ru ssell fin ish ing second after starting in the 38th starting posi tion. Third pla ce at the immacul ate racing facilit y in central O~io went to Fast By O 6 Ferracci's Jamie james. Commonwealth Honda's Randy Renfrow and Yoshimura Suzuki's Miguel DuHamel rounded out the top five fini shers. For Ch andler the win was his fourth of the season and fourth in a row. The . Californ ian started from the pole and, after getting an immediate advantage on the field, rode cautiously through lapped tra££ic to hold off Ru ssell by 2.28 seconds. Chandler averaged 92.908 mph for the 25-lap, 50-mile race, and picked up 4570 of the$35,OOO Superbike purse for hi s efforts. Wh ile Chandler, for the most part, was able to cruise after establishing his early lead, hi s teammate Ru ssell didn't have that luxury. After su££ering a clutch failure in his heat race on Saturday , the Georgian was forced to start the National on the back row of the 38-rider grid. He began quickly, however , and soon carved his way through to the four-rider dice for second place between james, Renfrow, DuHamel and Vance & Hines Yamaha's Thomas Stevens. Russell mixed it up with those four before pulling clear to give chase to the nearly over-cautious Chandl er, who at thi s point was tiptoeing through traffic. Ru ssell came up sho rt of catch ing Chandler at the fini sh, but it still will go down as one of the best rides of Ru ssell's career. The win moves Chandler closer to his first-ever AMA Superbike National Cha mpionship. All Chandler has to do is score eight poin ts a t the next round at Heartland Park T opeka in Kansas on Sep tember 9, and he will have clinched the titl e. He now leads Renfrow in the championship standings. 109-77, with two rounds remaining. Rid ers were greeted with a new and wider racing surface when they arri ved a th e immensely-popular Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The track was resurfaced over the winter, and is now 40-feet wide over its entire 2.4 mil es. The results were quicker lap times, and an easier way around slower riders. T eams were given an opportunity to practice on both Thursday and Friday , and thos e pra ctice sessions proved to be the undoing for two of the up-andcoming riderson the circuit. Yoshimura Suzuki upstart Rick Kirk highsided his GSXR750 during practice and su££ered a separated shoulder that eliminated him from racing. The second to go was j ap an'sTatsuro Arata, who crashed his Yamaha FZR600 durin g Supersport practice and was too sore to participate in either that class or the Superbike National. j ames was ano ther practice crasher, but altho ugh he was sore, there Van ce & Hines Yamaha 's Dav id Sadows ki nail ed the holeshot in the first of two five-lap heat races on Saturday. He was chased into tum one by local hero T om Kipp o n his Wiseco-backed Yam ah a FZR750. Chandler, meanwh ile, entered tum o ne in fourth place. Sadowski's lead lasted until the first corne r o n the second lap when Chandler dashed up the inside. From there the tall Californian wo uld pull clear to an 8.362-second win. Kipp managed to get past Sado wski on the second lap, and a lap later Sado wski's teammate Stevens was also by the Buford, Georgia resident. On the fourt h lap both Steven s and Sadowski man aged to get pa st Kipp and they would fini sh in that ord er. Jimmy Adam o, meanwhile, put his Ducati 851 into the fifth place spo t. By virtue of hi s fast heat race tim e, Chandler would sit on the pol e for the Nati onal. The Kawasaki ZX7-mountea rider averaged 93.481 mph after turning the five laps in 7:42.125. Chandler also set a new track record during the heat race, stopping the clocks at a 1:30.8, some five seconds quicker than times turned a year ago on the old. narrower circuit. The second five-lap affair saw James leading the way into turn one. By the end of the first lap. how ever, it was Renfrow leading a tightly-bunch ed group that included Russell, Dale Quarterley, DuHamel and James. Renfrow was able to get the best of the rest and he beat James to the line. DuHamel was third with Quarterley fourth and Canadian Jacques Guenette fifth . Russell's clutch problem dropped him out of the race on the third lap .· "One too many practice starts," crew chief Rob Muzzy said when questioned on the destroyed clutch. Renfrow averaged 91.750 mph in winning heat number two in 7:50.846, some eight seconds slower th an Chandler's effort. Saturday afternoon saw a downpour drench the race track for the AMA/CCS endurance race, and Renfrow was one of the few using the time to test rain setups. With a forecast for rain on Sunday, it appear ed that a National road race would be run in the rain for only the second time in six years, with the last such event occurring ironically at Mid-Ohio in 1984. Sunday morning's practice session was moi st, but rain tires weren't used. Chandler wa s still the quickest , although his lap times had dropped 18 seconds as the field struggled to fin a happy medium between the track' three distinct surfaces - asphalt concrete and sealed asphalt. " We can race in it (rain), but we'! be stra igh t up and down," Chandli said on Sunday morning as rain cloud loomed in the distance. One of the busier men in the pits a this time was Dunlop's Jim Allen ; wh was busy hand-cutting slicks in cas weather dictated the need from some thing in between a full rain and a slic racing tire. National By the time the 3:40 p.m. start of th 25-lap National rolled around, th threat of rain had subsided. and ther were even periodic bursts of sunshin through the cloud cover.