.ROAD RACE Championship Series Round 8: Gateway International Raceway
AlIA Superb/ke NatIonal
(Above left) 818ft Crevier "-ds for St. louis, the others In tow ~ to be heIIded for
ChIcago. (Above) Tray Bar.y rode a VlIIvollna SuzukI to eighth place; ..... he IMcIa FI'lICI
Merkel (27), Crevfer and Harfey-DlIVldaon'a Doug Chandler (10)_ (Below) The top thrM •
Picotte, DuHamel and Kipp celebnde In the wfnner's circle.
"The second time 1 made it stick,"
Kipp said of his pass on Hale. '1 think
he knew [ was on it. [ just dug down
real deep. 1 knew everyone was playing
head games and 1 was too. It would
have taken a 29-lap race (to beat
DuHamel). He was on the gas."
'1 really rode hard," Picotte said after
finishing third, matching his season best
at Pomona in the second round of the
series. "I just wanted to stay at that pace.
1 was really riding hard. 1 know now
that [ can win on that bike. Before, 1 was
down mentally. I'm really satisfied with
this third place. 1 know now it can win now [just have to make the jump."
·Briefl .....
Hale had slipped back some, finishing 3.8 seconds behind his teammate
DuHamel and realizing that the race for
the championship was about to start
fresh at Sears Point in two weeks.
"I got a lackluster start," explained
Hale, who reinjured his broken ribs with
a crash in the Suzuka 8-Hour. '1 ran up
and caught the leaders, but the bike was
pretty loose when 1 was third and 1
couldn't get the drives off the corners to
make the passes stick. It was one of
those weekends where we worked hard
right up until the race. We never got the
bikes where they were halfway smooth,
and [ wasn't that comfortable here
ing a.tllam of,mostly AMA workers who
removed some 230 feet of guardrail from tOms
four and five.
Vance & Hines Yamaha's J8mie· James was , .For the AMA, after 70 years of serving as a
sanctioning body, the Gateway round of the
a non"starter aUer crashing his Yamaha
AMA National Championship Road Race
VZF750 during Friday'S praclite, bruising both
Series marf
