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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127575
eROAD RACE AMA Superbike National Championship_:_OUD_d_4 R _ ~ Colin Edwards (45) got the jump on the field in all three starts of the Superbike National; here he leads Pascal Picotte (21), Jamie James (2) and the rest of the pack. Doug Polen (23) fights to hold off Miguel DuHamel (17) in the Superbike final at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Polen wins Charlotte crashfest By Paul Carruthers Photos by George Roberts CONCORD, NC, MAY I ne red flag. Two red flags. It made no difference. When the flag flew with the black and white checkers on it, the man most expected to be there first was. Who else but Doug Polen? In a race marred by two-red flags and too many violent crashes, Polen played his normal game of wait and see. In the end it came down to an eight-lap sprint race to the finish. No problem. Polen just turned up the wick on his Fast By Ferracci Ducati and beat what was left of the superbike field to the finish line. It was a vivid example of just how good the Ducati/Polen combination works whenever Polen decides to wick it up, the others simply can't keep pace. The best' of what was left included O 6 Vance & Hines Yamaha's Colin Edwards II, his biarnmate Jamie'James, and Team Mirage's Dale Quarterley. All three did a valorous job of keeping Polen honest, but when push came to shove the Texan simply put his head down and split. All this came over an hour and a half after the race had begun. What started with such promise ended in rather sour fashion. A classic multi-brand freight train at the front held up for most of the.28 Japs, but it turned into a rather unpleasant crashfest with many of the elite factory stars being eliminated. And it was a race that will surely have an impact on how the rest of the season will be played out. The most serious of the crashes occured on the 21st lap and it may very well have ruined a promising season for both Muzzy Kawasaki's Miguel DuHamel and Camel Commonwealth Honda's Tom Kipp. With DuHamel leading a five-rider freight train onto the banking, the French Canadian lost control of the Kawas¥i and crashed. What followed was a melee of flying hay bales, motorcycles and riders. Kipp couldn't avoid DuHamel's fallen motorcycle and the pair crashed heavily as the others took evasive action through the explosion of hay. Kipp suffered a broken lower leg in the accident, while DuHamel was fortunate to escape with only scrapes and bruises. Polen was for- tunate to have not also crashed as he and the Ducati punched their way through a hay bale en route to safety. And this wasn't the first time the race was stopped. Michigan's Eric Moe had crashed his Honda RC30 in the same spot on the fourth lap of the Na tionaI, but fortunately his careening motorcycle wasn't hit by any other riders. Moe escaped without injury, but the debrisstrewn track forced the AMA to throw the first of the two red-flags. For Polen the win was the 10th AMA Superbike victory of his career, moving him out of a tie and into fifth all alone on the all-time list of winners, behind Fred Merkel, Wayne Rainey, Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson. It also further increased his lead in the championship as he now leads DuHamel and Quarterley, who are tied, by a whopping 35 points after four of 11 rounds. For his efforts, Polen pocketed $4250 of the $25,000 Superbike purse. In the end it was the 19-year-old Edwards who carne away with second place, the best result of his young, yet irnpressive..Superbike career - but he couldn't match the blazing pace that Polen turned in during the final run to the flag. Still, Edwards was good enough to hold off the charging Quarterley and his Team Mirage Kawasaki, with James close behind in fourth place. . Fifth place went to Muzzy Kawasaki's Takahiro Sohwa and beyond that - well, the day belonged to the have-nots as the haves eliminated themselves in one way o~ another throughout the race. N2 Racing's John Ashmead rode his Kawasaki to a sixthplace finish, his best result since winning the D"ytona 200 in 1989. Ducatimounted Pablo Real, Yamaha of Jacksonvi!le's Larry Locklear, Long Beach Kawasaki's Brad Hazen and Suzuki-mounted Craig Gleason rounded out the top 10 as privateers filled the top posilions. So what happened to the rest of the factory stars? Yoshimura Suzuki's Thomas Stevens was the first to depart when he crashed on the second lap of the first restart; Pascal Picotte suffered a