Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eROAD RACE AMAlCCS HP4 600cc Su~_ort_Se_ri_es:_Ro_un_d_l ~ Britt Turkington (28) got the jump at the start of the 600cc Supersport final. Tom Kipp (1) and Mike Smith (8) follow. Miguel DuHamel kept the pressure on Kipp and it eventually paid off with a win. DuHamel wins, others DQd By Paul Carruthers Photos by Henny Ray Abrams 10 GOODYEAR, AZ, FEB. 15 hings truly were not as they seemed in the 600cc Supersport Final at Phoenix International Raceway. For one, it appeared that Camel Honda's Tom Kipp had the race T in hand. For 'another, even after Kipp crashed and handed victory to Muzzy Kawasaki's Miguel DuHamel, it seemed that Yoshimura Suzuki's Britt Turkington had finished third with Camel Honda's Randy Renfrow and Mike Smith fourth and fifth, respectively. Wrong. DuHamel did win, giVing Kawasaki's new ZX-6 a very important victory in its first race of the season and his first race on the bike. But the rest isn't how it seems. For while Turkington, Renfrow and Smith did fin- . ish second, third and fourth on the race track, fuel samples taken from the Suzuki GSXR600 and the two Honda CBR600s failed to pass AMA regulations in a post-race test and the three were disqualified. The disqualifications moved everybody up three places, giving Class Racing's Jason Pridmore second place on another new Kawasaki and third to Gerald Rothman Jr. on an American Suzuki-backed Suzuki GSXR600. Two Brothers Racing's Rick Kirk and Tommy Lynch rounded out the' top five finishers on their Honda CBR600s. The man who may have gained the most out of the entire disqualification situation was Kipp. The defending 600cc National Champion led until the 23rd lap when he lost the front end in tum seven; he remounted to finish 16th, but that would turn into 13th after the disqualification of his two teammates and Turkington. Better still, Kipp finished far enough down that they didn't bother. to test his fuel which also figured to be illegal since it likely carne from the same batch as Renfrow's and Smith's. So instead of winning the race, being disqualified and not scoring any points, Kipp came away from Phoenix with a 13th place finish and 18 valuable points. Strange, but true. The race began with Turkington leading the field into turn one. Kipp was in tow with Smith and DuHamel stalking him. Kipp took over the lead on the second lap, the same go-around that saw DuHamel move past Smith. Almost instantly, Kipp started to pull away. He led by three seconds after five laps and that lead continued to grow. At roughly the halfway mark, DuHamel started to put pressure on Kipp, gaining a little here and a little there. "I was catching him," DuHamel said. "I was chipping away, and I was thinking, 'we're gonna get -him.' I never let up. I was two seconds behind when he fell. I saw him lose the front. I was happy he wasn't hurt." Then on the 23rd lap, Kipp crashed. "I just tucked the front," he said later. "The lead got to about three seconds and then went back to five. I was going quick. The track is very coarse, very _ abrasive and I just cooked the rear tire. I was trying to baby the rear and that meant I was working the front end hard. I just pushed it and it went. The bike was handling so well I could push it hard, but the track ate up the tire." From there it was a DuHamel runaway, similar to those he turned in back in 1991 when he won the AMA/CCS 600cc Supersport title. His only problem was misreading his pitboard: "I thought it said plus 2 and plus 3, but actually it said plus 12, plus 13. That was a little problem." Turkington, meanwhile, was all alone in second place while Renfrow worked nearly the whole race to catch Smith. Finally, he did, on the 20th lap. They battled for awhile, but Renfrow eventually got the best of the man who dominated this series before suffering a broken leg in June of last year. "I wasn't on today," Smith said. "It just wasn't there." Pridmore was also alone in fifth, followed by Rothman and a battle between the two Two Brothers teammates, Kirk and Lynch. Lynch, though, was suffering with a misfiring engine, and Kirk had come back from an early off-track excursion. Behind them, Cycle World magazine's Don Canet had gotten lhe best of a battle with Robert Wright. Results 6DDce SS FJNAL: 1. Miguel DuHamel (Kaw); 2. Jason Pridmore (!

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