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mechanical failure on his Fast By
Ferracci Ducati while running in the
lead group on the seventh lap; and
Camel Honda's Mike Smith crashed
hard after breaking away from the pack
on the 12th lap. Add those to the misfortunes suffered by Kipp and DuHamel,
and you can see why only 17 of the original 25 starters were still running at the
conclusion of the race.
50 with a wrench thrown into the
championship, Polen now appears to
have a firm hold on the title chase. The
Texan leads DuHamel and the consistent Quarterley, 133-98. Muzzy
Kawasaki's Scott Russell is fourth with
95 points, despite not competing in
Charlotte due to World Superbike commitments, and Edwards is fifth with 88
points.
. High clouds, warm temperatures and
the largest crowd since AMA National
racing resumed three years ago at
Charlotte Motor Speedway greeted the
start of the 28-lap National.
Rookie sensation Edwards nailed the
start perfectly on his Yamaha, leading
Picotte, James, Smith and Sohwa into
tum one for the first time. They ended
the first lap in similar fashion, with
Stevens running straight in tum one to
drop well back in the pack.
On the second lap, Edwards and
Picotte made a break from the chasing
pack, putting about a second between
themselves and Smith, who also had a
little gap over DuHamel and James.
Polen, meanwhile, sat in ninth place and
appeared to be in,no hurry whatsoever.
Remember Laguna 5eca?
N2 Racing's Jim Sabin laid down
some oil in tum one to start the third
lap, causing Gold Hill Racing's
Christian Gardner to crash his Yamaha.
Pablo Real was also involved in the incident"being forced onto the grass on the
outside of the comer to avoid the melee.
Sabin went to the pits to have the prob-
Dale Quarterley leads Doug Polen, Miguel DuHamel" Colin Edwards and Tom Kipp through the Kitchen Sink.
lem repaired, losing two laps to the
leaders in the process.
On the fifth lap, Moe crashed his
Honda RC30 on the entrance to the
banking in NASCAR turn one, bringing
out the first of the two red flags.
After a brief break in the action, racing resumed with Edwards again nailing down the holeshot. Smith was
tucked in behind, and didn't waste any
time in taking over from the young
Texan. By the time they got to the bank-
Kimets his first ever p-=-=..:ole
_
amel Honda's Tom Kipp (right) was excited and he had every reason to be. The Mentor,
Ohio, rider had just secured his first-ever AMA
Superbike pole position and he was having a hard
time removing the smile from his friendly face.
"Did I get it?" Kipp asked. Ah ha," aune the
answer.. The pole position was his after a dramatic
late-session lap of one-minute, 21.301-seconds at an
average clip of 99.630 mph on the bright yellow
Honda RC30. So what was the key to the quick laps
on the makeshift, chicane-strewn Charlotte MOtor
Speedway?
"I'm riding really aggressively," Kipp said.
"You've got to attack it. It's so rough. You're confidence has to be up - you have to be ready for everything. The key is to attack it. I'm not doing anything
dangerous, I'm just making the bike work hard.
Those are hard race tires that I qualified with. It's a bumpy ride, bUt you've just got to
make it work.U
Not all had gone smoothly for I