Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ap parently d idn't faze Hale as he proce ed ed to pull f ree fro m th e Picott e / Crevier tussle. He led by a second afte r nin e laps , by tw o seconds after 13 lap s, three seconds after 15 laps, and al most five seconds afte r 18 la p s. H e would continue to pour it on until the gap reached 12 seconds at the end of the 3D-lap race - and victory was his. Like all con fid en t you ng ra cers, he wasn't surprised by his effort. "I thought I could get ou t there and get away," Hale said later. "I knew I h ad to get a good start, but I thou ght Pascal (Picott e) and I co u ld get away, and I thou ght Jam ie (James ) wou ld hang tough. I saw Pascal w as having so me d ifficulties and I thought I need to get by him, and see if he cou ld ma ybe hold up the othe r gu ys so I could put so me time on 'em . 1 thi nk it worked ou t pretty good. The bike wor ked gre at, from day one rea lly." Behind h im th e b attle fo r se con d h ea ted up w ith Crevier getting by on the 20th lap - with a li ttle help from a b a ck m ark er. "The g uy h a d al ready sta rted to lean, and I went on the outside and he hit me," said Picotte, w ho finis hed the race with tire m arks o n the right si de of his sea t and exhaus t pipes. "It scared the heck out of the guy an d h e ju s t s traigh tened u p and T-boned Pascal , " Crev ier said. "I think I s till went around all that. The gu y de finitely go t spooked . A blu e flag (to let slower riders know th at fa ster. ri ders a re approach ing) one d ay would be nice. The la p ped ri d ers h ave to lea rn tha t they are going to be pa ssed and it seems to b e a prob lem here more than anywhere because there's one line." The inci den t n o t o n ly a llowe d Crevier to pass Picotte, but it also fu rther inc re ase d th e p a in in P ic o tt e ' s sho ulder. " It go t bad after I got h it by the lapped rider," Picotte said. "I prob ably tigh te ne d m y muscle mo re tha n usual a nd it really h u rts whe n you tig hten yo u r muscle ha rd . Right afte r th at it s ta r te d hu rtin g, hurti n g an d hurting. I really though t it w as 25 laps, not 30. I started thinking too mu ch an d that was it." Once p ast Picotte, Cr evi er had no false illu sions of being able to reel in Hale. "I rod e reall y hard just to ge t past Pas cal," Crevier said . "The lapped traffic set me bac k a bit and I ma de so me ba d d e cis io n s in lap p e d traffic . My ch a rge to ca tch an d p ass Pascal u sed me up too mu ch . Mike was a lrea dy way too far go ne . You can' t ma ke up five seconds too easily on a course .like this." In the race for fourth pl a ce, Ja mes ha d come through to take ove r the spo t on the 12th lap from Ducati tea m ma tes Sm i th an d So h w a . H e th en s t arte d p u lling away from th e tw o red bi kes, only to run straight at the chicane on the 19th lap - a mistake that dropped h im ba ck to six th . The Louisianan was ab le to sneak by Smith a lap later before running d own Schwa and passing him on the 24th lap. At that point he was ab le to p u ll clear and finish a comfortable fou rth . . "I jus t p u t m y head down after the incident at the start," James said. "I settled in after th at and worked my way th ro ugh . Mi ke (Smith) and (Taka h iro) So hwa w ere h a v ing so me h an dlin g problems, bu t I ov ershot th e littl e chicane and h ad to star t all over again. I rode m y ta il off and di d n 't ge t a nywhere." Me rkel con tinued to p ick up s peed as the race w ore on, turning his qu ickes t lap (a 1:25.689) on the 26th of 30 la ps as h e tr ie d to catch the two Ducatis. Alt hough he and Kip p, who chase d Merkel throu gh out, managed to Picotte/Kawasaki on pole P ascal Picotte (right) score d hi s first pole position for his new em ployer, Rob Mu zzy, at the Pomo na Fairplex - an d in the process w ent a long way toward thwarting tho se who believed his speed fro m rece n t years wa s only a by-product of him riding a Du cati . The Fr en ch Can adian was th e fa s te s t o f th e superbike men through out qualifyin g and in the end he was the only rider to eclipse the one-minute, 24second mark as he dipped dow n to a 1:23.898 in the final of two sessions. Looking slim and fit, Picotte suddenly established h im self as the man to beat despite undergoing surgery to his broken right collarbone only two weeks ago . "I knew yesterday that I would be able to do at least a second quicker," a co nfi d en t Picotte said . "That's exactly what I did and I' m really happy . That lap time, a 23.8, I got cau ght beh ind a lapped guy in the last corner so 1 maybe lost a half-second there. It could have been 23.5 - but I'm still on the pol e so I'm reall y happy. . "Man y people thought I was good jus t because I was on the red bike, the Du cati. That may have been one of th e reasons why I changed teams th is year. I wen t to Kawasaki to prove that I was able to be in the front with any kind of bike - any Japanese bike or even maybe a Harley one day." As for his broken collarb one: " It feels pretty good. It's really sore, but the way I'm riding the bike it' s not that bad. If I can run away tom orrow , I'll try it. If not , I might sandbag a little bit and see what's going on. If I can save the rear tire and the engine a little bit...but I don't want to be too far behind with the Japped guys beca use it can be hard. We'll just see at the end." The man with the second-quickest time was Vance & Hines Yamaha's Jamie Jam es . The Louisianan circulated the 2.1-mile race track in 1:24.492 in the second of two sessions to place him next to Picotte on the front row. "The bike's really running strong," James said. "The Vance & Hines crew does an excellent job. We'll adjust on a few things in the morning and see if we can' t get a little more speed out of it - and put on a good show, hopefully." James spent some of the final session looking for different lines: "I' m looking for anything 1 can get to g0 faster. I almost saw some places that I didn't want to see, actu allf. Everybody is riding these things really hard and J think you'H see a good show." ~veteran also commented 'On-the par.t:iilly,,;:.redeslgnedkrace track which still get Sohwa, th ey co u ld n' t quite catch Smith. "I just rode it as h a rd as I co u ld, " Merkel sai d of his Yoshimura Su zuki GSXR750. "That's all it's got. The team is wo rking really hard and we're going to go and test at Laguna Seca. We we re just Mike Hale won his first-ever AMA Superbike National and ended Honda 's winless drought in AMA Superbike racing, weaves its way through the parkin g lot of the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds: "Actually the track layo u t makes it a lot safe r," Jame s said . "They did away with some of those high-impact area s and that's what we were mainly concerned with last year. It just got us riled up in the beginning last year, but it got better . They d id an excellent job and I think they' ll have good racing here from no w on." The third man on the fro nt row was Smo kin ' Joe' s Honda's Mike Ha le, in what is really his first full season of AMA Superbike racing. The young T exan clicked off a 1:24.493 in the second session on his brand-new 1995 H ond a RC45. Hale cut over a second off h is first-session time, tha nks to the use of Dunlop qualifying tires, to grab the third spot on the front row with a 1:24.493. "Today we put qualifying tires on and that was the biggest difference," Hal e said. "Yesterday we pretty m uch used the session as an impromptu test session with racecompound tires. That's prett y m uch wh ere the di ffer ence was. The new '95 mo del bike is really fast. Migu el (DuHam el) was going good on it at Dayton a so 1 was really excited and looking forwa rd to getting on it here. I go t on it an d we kind of meshed , and clicked, right off the bat. Ther e's no tellin g in qual ifying. The race is where it counts an d race se tu p is w here it's at. But we've got the RC45 on the front ro w and we're going to start strong and finish tough. I think we 'll end up running low 25s - it just depends on what Pas cal can do . Right now he 's over half a second quicker and we're cha sing him. We'll put the race tires on and I think it'll be a close race. I don't think Pascal will be able to ge t away." Yoshimura Suzuki's Fred Merkel completed the first row of the grid, the former World an d National Ch ampion riding hard to giv e Suzuki its first front row sta rt in recent memory. Merkel lapped at 1:24.609. Leading row two would be Muzzy Kaw asaki's .Steve Cre vier at 1:24.661. "It's a little disappointing because I thou ght I was on the front row, but J guess I'm not." Crevier said . "The bike's wo rking real good. It's jus t a matter of getting clean lap s. You come into traffic here an d it can really hold you up bad, un like other places. Passing is pretty good, bu t there's really nowhere to go when so meo ne is slowing d own. With a b it of luck tomorrow we'll go better in the race. Those we re easy lap times that I qualified at, so I feel J can race at tha t and that' s good. Fatigue will be a factor here an d that's why J pack on these extra pounds - 1don 't think I'll have a pr oblem being.there at the very en d ." Followi ng Crevier was Van ce & Hines' Tom Kipp (1:24.746), Smokin ' Joe's Migu el DuHamel (1:25.161), and then the three struggling Fast By Ferracci Ducati 916s ridden by Takahiro Schwa (1:25.921), Mike Smith (1:26.480) and Freddie Spencer (1:26.711) with all three having problems with the front ends of their V-twins. Team owner Eraldo Ferracci blamed at least a portion of the problem on the team adapting to the Miche lin tires. According to Ferracci, the Michelins give a lot more rear gri p, causing the fronts to push. Different-len gth swingarrns were being used, and the Ducati guru said the problem would be fixed by the time the team arrived at Laguna Seea for the third round of the series. "We' ll be okay," he said. Team Mirage's Dale Quarterley, Harley-Davidson's Chris Carr and Doug Chandler, and Yoshimura Suzuki's Donald Jacks rounded GUt the top 15 qualifiers. ...... I-< c, ~ 7

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