Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Harley-Davidsons of Dou g Ch andler and Chris Carr. Carr's troubles started on the warm-up lap when his VRl000 refused to run properly. He started the race from pit lane, and eventually called it a day after five laps . Chandler, meanwhile, lasted two laps longer, pulling in after the seventh la p with his VRl000 refusing to run at speed. Ironically, the three privateer VRl000s, ridden by Scott Zampach, Ron McGill and An dy Fenwick, were all running at the finish with the trio finishing 13th, 15th and 22nd, respectively. Four different manufacturers Honda, Ducati, Suzuki and Yamaha were represen ted in the top six, with Picotte the first Kawasaki in 11th place. Cloud cover moved into Ameri ca' s Dairyl and just prior to th e start of the Superbike Nation al, but weather never becam e a factor. Merkel was in trouble before the ra ce even s ta r ted as his Yoshimura mech anics were forced to change the clutch on the start line after the Sighting lap and prior to the warmu p lap. Carr' s tr oubles ca me shortly thereafter. "The bike was cu tt ing ou t co m ing out of turn o ne," Carr said. "I b lew th rough turn five a nd ca m e ba ck up here. They couldn't come up with anything, but 1 had to start from pi t lane. Some laps it was okay, but I was about to get lapped. I th ought about staying ou t there but I wo uldn't have gotten any points." . Those wi tho ut p robl ems were well The race came down to three riders: DuHamel , Hale and Smith. The trio were never farther apart than this. o n their wa y wi th Sm it h lead ing the pack by the time they reached turn five a t the end o f th e b ack straight. Th e Georgian wasn't wasting any time, and he led DuH amel by two seconds when they crossed the stripe for the first time. That lead stayed at two seco nds for ano ther three laps, with DuHamel, Hale, Sohwa, Crevier, Stevens , James, Kipp, and Spencer giving chase. Hale turned th e th en-fastest lap of the race (a 2:12.333) on the third lap as he moved past his teamma te an d into second place. Sohwa's race was ruined Repaved Road America • fast fast fast R oad America was always fast. This past winter it got a lot faster. Thanks in part to negotiations to bring a Grand Prix to the four-mile race track in Wisconsin, the entire layout was repaved in October. The result: record speeds in each and every class and adulation from the riders, many of whom claimed that Road America was the smoothest race track they'd ever ridden on . With pool-tablelike smoothness and added runoff areas (most notably in the Carousel), lap speeds jumped accordingly. When all was said and done, Mike Hale (right) had circulated the "Four Miles of Fun" at an average clip of 108.829 mph in securing his second pole position of the year. The 22-year-old Texan clicked off his two-minute, 12.318-second lap in the final of two timed sessions on Saturday afternoon. And Hale wasn 't alone in breaking Pascal Picotte's lap record of 2:15.99 of a year ago. In all, 13 riders were under Picotte's 1994 mark. The high p raise of the circu it ranged from three-time World Champion Freddie Spencer saying that it was "bea utiful" to the simplistic explanation given by ex-dirt tracker Hale. 'This is the smoothest track I've ever ridden on - it' s like the Springfield Mile before anybody goes out..." Hale secured his second pole position, and the cham pionship point that goes along wi th it, during a fog-shortened session on Saturday afternoon. "With the new pavement, it was to be expected," ·Hale said of his new lap record . "We made some ch anges, but yesterday (Friday), on my good lap, we had some mechanical problems (the RC45 started to run low on fuel). I knew we could come back and go quicker today - how much I wasn 't sure. I kn ew we could go qui ck and be around what (Fred ) Merkel ran yesterday. The team worked really hard and I did my best to do a perfect lap and it was good enough to get the pole. With the traffic here, it' s hard to get a clear lap. I'm sure these guys here feel the sam e. The Carousel, for instance: I put on a good tire and caught a rider at the Carousel, the next lap I caught the lappers at a little better place - then until the end of the session there was a guy in the Carousel every lap . I was able to get a good enough lap that one time to put it in the books." Hale, the Man of the Year thus far in the 1995 road racing season, stru ggled at Road America last year, finishing eighth in the 600cc Supersport. Pundits pointed to Road America as the telltale race for Hale . His performance in qualifying quickly silenced the doubters. 'This was probably the hardest track for me to adjust to last year," Hale said. "I came in here really wanting to do good; I wanted to prove to myself that I could conquer this track because last year I didn't do good here. I'm really pleased how qualifying has gone" Second quickest was Fast By Ferracci's Freddie Spencer, the three-time World on the fifth lap when he ran off the track in turn five, losing 10 or so positions in the process. By the time the pack completed six laps, Hale was right with Smith, and DuHamel w asn't far behind either. Stevens had jumped up to third and was on the move, only three seconds behind DuHamel. Then it was DuHamel's turn to click off a quick lap - a 2:12.694 to move in tight to the lead duo. At the halfway mark, the three at the front were tied together - bu t it was Spencer who appeared to be the man to beat after clicking off a 2:12.291 to move into a solid fifth place behind Stevens. This was also the lap that saw DuHamel move to the front for the first time as he led Smith and Hale. Then it was Smith back in front again as they put nine laps in the books. And it was on the ninth lap that Spencer moved around Stevens to take over fourth. Although he would close in on the lead trio, he would never seriously challenge after hitting lapped traffic in turn five late in the race. "Two laps from the end, I was about 20 bike lengths behind," Spencer explained. "Then there were four guys. They spread out and stopped in tum five. It just killed my momentum. We'd changed motors this morning after getting an oil lea k. This motor shifts real stiff and on the first and second laps it'd hang when I'd downshift. After three laps it cured up. I tho ught maybe that I'd have a cha nce. I thought if I got up there that Mike (Smith) would hear me and ma ybe we'd work together. It was like I was watching a dogfight from a distance." And the dogfight went the distance, with each of the top three taking turns at the front. It all came down to the final lap, with DuHamel leading three corners fro m the finish, only to see Hale sneak underneath. The Texan d rifted a tad wide on the exit, and there was just enough roo m for Du H a mel to sneak through. Hal e had no time to react, and Smith could do nothing but watch. They Champion clicking off his 2:12.358 on the final lap of the last session. like Hale, Spencer also ran into lapped traffic during his best laps . "Usually when it' s (the qualifying session) an hour, the slower guys are all in by the end," Spencer said. 'With it being 30 minutes like that, it's like they were coming out every lap . On that last lap I hit about three or four people, even though it was my fastest. I guess we've been lucky that they clear out in the last 15 minutes. That's one reason I like the longer sessions. I wanted to do that lap a little faster, being that the session was just 30 minutes, just to get it over with. I was afraid that they (the slower riders) would stay out there, and that's kinda what they did. There's such a big gap here in the speeds. "Yesterday (Friday), the tire we had on for qualifying wasn't the one we should have had on. We .kind of had a little mix-up there. I did a 12.9 this morning, a nd I thought maybe we could go faster . I thought maybe l ls. And I'm sure any of us on a clean lap could do that. I'm happy with it. The bike's running good and everything we run is pretty much race setups. It's hard to know what the race pace will be. This race track is just going to get faster and faster. It's harder to set up a bike on a track like this because you don't get any feedback. It's so smooth, there's really only a few GP tracks that you go to that are this smooth. I think they did a great job - it's just beautiful." Sitting next to Spencer on the front row would be Hale's Smokin' Joe's Racing teamma te Miguel DuHamel, who turned a 2:12.366 - a vast improvement over his Friday times. 'We d id some set-up changes, trying to get the front end to steer in a bit better," DuHamel said. 'We also changed the internal gear ratio just a tad , just a bit. It wasn't quite right, so for the final session toda y we changed the final gear ratio. It seemed to be working pretty good. It's not perfect SO I'll sit down with Al

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