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AMAICCS 600 and 750cc Su~rt National Championship: Round 3
ROADRACE
'D amlbeats Arnaiz at Loudon
uH e
By Paul Carruthers
Photos by Henny Ray Abrams
e
e
LOUDON, NH, JUNE 16
rying to make up for last week's
disqualification in the second
D
round of the series at Brainerd,
Commonwealth Honda 's Miguel
DuHamel managed to hold off the nearrace long advances of his teammate Rich
Amaiz to take the 600cc Superspons win
at New Hampshire International
Speedway.
; The victory was DuHamel's third
straight on the race track, but last week
.a t Brainerd he was stripped of his win
when his bike was found to have an
illegal exhaust header in post-race tech
inspection.
. ~ . But there was no denying DuHamel
and his Dunlop-shod Honda CBR600
F2 in this one, a race which started in
wet conditions and finished on a neardry race line. Second place went to
DuHamel 's Californian. teammate
Amaiz on an identical Honda while
Tom Kipp put his Bridgestone-shod
Atlantic Motorsports Group Honda
CBR600 F2 into the winner's circl e for
the second successive race.
Kevin Rentzell finished fourth on
his Yamaha of Jacksonville Yamaha
FZR600 with Brockton, Massachussen's Robert Wright rounding out the
top five finishers on his Quarterley
Racing-backed Yamaha.
,
The championship point leader
going into Loudon, Jamie James, had
a miserable day on his Vance &: Hines
Yamaha with th e steering damper
failing. James could barely ride the
machine in the miserable conditions,
and he struggled to finish 22nd and out
of the points.
Thus the points lead goes to Kipp
with 45 points over DuHamel's 40.
James holds on to third with 32 points.
The rain had stopped but the track
was still very wet when the 22-lap final
got underway on Sunday morning. The
early leader was Two Brothers Racing's
Jeff Farmer, but the Floridian would
later fade before crashing out of the race
on the fifth lap.
.
DuHamel quickly moved past Farmer
by the time the pack arrived in turn 10
on the opening lap, with Michael Barnes
and Amaiz wasting no time in sticking
with the Canadian.
Amaiz moved past Barnes on the
second lap and trailed DuHamel by just
over two seconds on the fourth goaround. Arnaiz quickly sliced into
DuHamel's lead and by the sixth lap
the duo were together.
They stayed that way until the 16th
lap when DuHamel got the better breaks
in traffic and pulled clear from his
teammate. Not wanting to risk a crash,
Amaiz backed down and DuHamel led
him across the line by 6.5 seconds.
"I lost the front one time, and I didn't
want to crash," Amaiz said
The battle for third was led initially
by Barnes but Kipp and Rentzell were
on the move. Kipp, wh o com pleted the
first lap in 10th place after getting
" slammed from behind in turn one,"
sliced hi s way through the pack to
fourth. By the time he did so, he was
some 10 seconds beh ind Barnes, but he
kept plugging away, and on the 18th
lap he was with him as they approached
turn three. In turn lOon the same lap,
Barnes crashed on the wet Pavement,
allowing Kipp, Rentzell and Wright,
whoeamed the Top Expen honors, with
his fifth place finish, to motor by. Barnes
remounted to finish sixth.
"The racing line was real small,"
DuHamel said "It was im po ssible to get
.s
[
by some of those gu ys. A couple of times
things worked well for me in traffic and
sometimes it didn't,"
O¥
Results
HEAT t: I. Migud I>ulhI=1 (H on ); 2. Larry
Schwanbach (Yam ); 3. Jamie Jarncs (Yam ); 4. Rich
Amaiz (Hon) ; 5. T om Kipp (H on); Ii Tal

