Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

if I won by 10 seconds or if I won by a tenth of a second. I said, 'They can catch u p, b u t g etting around me will b e an other situation.'" Ch and ler th ought th ete w as h ope. " I fig u red a t th e pace he was going (Du Hamel) th at h e maybe had some trouble with th e tire , fro nt or re ar, going away:' Chan d ler said la te r. "I w as ju st pretty hap py w ith what I chose for tires (Opposite page) Miguel DuHamel (1) gets the Jump on Doug Chandler (1) and the re st of the fie ld In t he firs t-eve r AMA Superbike National at the Home stead Motor s ports Complex. (Above) Mat Mladin (66), Chandler (10), Larry Pegram (72) and Mike Sm ith (68) prepare to lap Paul Netterstrom (109). (Left) DuHame l celebrates his 'thlrd Supe rbike victo ry of the season. Pole and point to D am uH el T o s a y that Miguel DuHam el (ri ght) li ke d th e n ew , s ho rte r s w i nga r m that was fitted to his Honda RC45 o n Frid ay at th e Homest ead Motorsp orts Co m p lex w o u ld be a n unde rstatem ent . "He told me to never lake it off," Sm ok in ' j oe 's Honda t une r AI Luddington . said . "Th e new swingann is much better for steering, DuHamel e xp lained. "It's a big improvemen t. Now I'm able to go into the corner hard like I usuallv do, and I'm able to alS<; keep more cornering spee d . And have a good drive coming out. I'm starti ng to be pretty strong all around the race track." Somew ha t of an understatement consideri ng he'd just used his new swingann - and an Ohlins front fork instead of his normal Showa unit - to clock a I :26.296 lap at an average speed of 92.195 mph to secure po le position at the immac u la te new Homestead facility. But it wasn't easy. In fact, it all came down to the v"ry final minut es of the v"ry final qualifying session on Saturday afternoo n, the drama building conside rably as Du Hamel and championship rival Doug Chandler went back onto the 2.21-m ile track, their motorcycles filled with qualifyi ng setu ps for one final run at the pole. Whe n all was sai d and done, it was DuHa mel and his Smokin' joe 's Honda earning the pole position and, more importantly, the single championship point that goes with it. and I felt th ey'd be as good a t the end as they w ere a t th e b eginning, a n d I did so me good laps at th e end . I think I just let h im get away too much at the start." A t th e beginning of the 27th l a p, DuHamel caught a fal se neutral going into tum o ne, drifted wide and allowed Ch and ler to run it in underneath, th e Cali fo rnian leading for th e fir st time albeit temporari ly . "Goin g in to one I got a fa lse neutral, which is very odd because it never ha ppens o n the RC45," DuHamel said. "So it must h av e been m y mi st ake . I w asn 't going in th ere too hard. I knew the tires had so me pretty hard laps o n them, and I d id n' t w an t to exaggerate too much. I w a s h opin g to ge t back on line before Doug got th er e but h e knows better - he just to ok hi s eyes off me an d went for th e line. And he took the lead ." Then Chandler' s drive was ruined when he encountered a lapped rider on th e exit. " Doug g o t a lapped ri d e r and that was the one l apped rid er that didn't All this came a day after Du Hamel was disqualified from Friday's timed ses sion when his RC45 weighed in a sing le pound under the AMA superbike minimum. "Today it was probably 10 pound s over," DuH amel joked before explaining how the bike had coming in a tad light. "We mad e a lot of changes to the bike. W e changed the swingarm, cha nged a whole bunch of stuff. But the biggest thing i think tha t mad e the difference was the flywheel , You put a heavier fly whee] to control the spin, and when we took the heavier flywheel off we lost like two pounds, three pounds. And when we put the lightest one we have, well there you go. The funny thing is we tried a different rim on the bike, as far as wid th goes . and I did my fastest lap on that tire. 1 came in and tried to better it with the other tire and it was on the narr ower rim. As it checked out if we had the wider rim on with that old tire on it (the weight) would have been straig ht on the nose . It's just one of those things. You can't blame a guy who is working so hard for having something like that slip by." It matte red not, because DuHamel was ultimately able to go just as quick - albeit a day later. "We felt confident that we could reproduce the times and we did," DuHamel said. "It was kind of tough today because we did a race simulation during timed qualifying - 20 laps, hard laps, and I was actually leading there for a while with the pole. I was pretty happy with that and then, of course, we came in and pu t the qualifying tires on and went out and did those laps. I think there's still a little bit more speed left out there, but I think I was a little tired from doing all of those hard laps. I didn 't want to jump over tha t edge, you know. Everything turned out really well; we have the point, and we have the pole in both classes. That's a pretty good day's work. I did it on the second-to-last lap, and I think the last lap would have been a little faster. But in the last comer I got a little bit too excited and wicked on the throttle too hard and 1 just went up in a pile of smoke. It slid pretty bad and I was pretty mad because I think that last lap could have been faster." The laid-back Chandler wasn' t overly concerned with being second on the grid, his time of I :26.404 also coming very late in the session . "The last lap would have been quick," Chandler said . "But I got held up in the last three corners. But it' s okay. Idea lly, I think you'd wan t to be third or fourth on the grid for the start. We did good times with the race tires and we' ll be okay tomorrow. I think it's just important to get the start and go. It'll be hard if you can't make the break at the start. " w o rk in h is favor," DuHamel sa id . " It help ed m e because he didn't get a good dri ve o u t of that co m er . I timed it just righ t. H e looked back ar me an d I went right, a n d I w ent p a ss ing o n the rig h t was not so sm a r t b ecause th ere w a s a left comer coming up. W e were side by s ide an d I was ju st waitin g fo r h im to brake . When he brak ed, I brak ed a litt le d eeper and kept m y eye o n him in case h e w~s going to d o m o re and close th e d oo r. "I knew I stood a decent chance, but that lapper ki nd of m essed thin gs up: ' Chandler s a id . "I figured I co u ld have picked it up a bit m ore . I w as pretty co nfid ent in m y fro n t tire and the rear tire seemed to be holdin g in th ere too. I felt I could put some good laps in th ere at th e end , but it just didn't work that way for m e . It was a good race. H e made a break for it and I kind of couldn't get m yself going. Every time I tried to put a lot of e ffo rt into m y laps e a rly on, I had th e rear end come around . So I ju st had to se tt le m yself d own, get in a rh ythm and Despite getting quicker on day two, Larry Pegram considered himself unfortu nate on the second and final day of qualifying. The Fast By Ferracci Ducali rider hit a snag \\;!h the setup of his front fork, and he didn ' t go as quick as he'd hoped. Still, his time of I :26.860 was good enough for the third spot on the fron t row. "It was bad, " Pegram said of his final session. "We had all kind s of problems toda y. This mornin g I mad e three laps and the transmission went out . Today they changed some stuff and for some reason we couldn't get back to the settings we had yL'Sterda y. I was really fighting the bike a lot. I think J only did four laps in a row . The rest of the time I was doing one lap and coming in, one lap and coming in. I wasn't happ y with it, but I definitely have room for improvement over the time I ran today. 1 think I can go fas tertomorro w, We did that time with race tires and with the bike not handling the way it should. I feel tomorrow we can go even faster and do it consistently if we can get the bike where it should be. "The problems were with the front end. They mad e some changes last night - one of the fork seals was leading so we put new seals in and redid the forks and oil and so forth . For some reason we had a real bad chatter toda v tkat we couldn 't correct with changing settings - compression , rebound, or any kind. Possibly when they put it back together something wasn't right, but we didn't get to run but three laps this morning so 1 didn 't no tice it. To morrow, we' ll fix it." Making it a four-brand - Honda, Kawa saki, Ducati and Suzuki - front row was Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin, the Au stralian clicking off a 1:26.972 to fill the fou rth po si tion , despite not getti ng the new parts the team were expecting for this race . The second row would consist of Smokin' Joe's Steve Crevier, Vance & Hines Yamaha's Tom Kipp , Yoshimura's Pascal Picotte and Muzzy 's Mike Smith. Pico tte wasn't pleased with the lack of new pa rts for the Yoshi m ura Suzuki. "Testing here helped us a little bit," Picotte said. "But we've changed so mu ch since last year (the tests were held in December, 1995). We just need more bottom end and midr ange. We've asked for a swingarm , new link and more midrange, but.," Row thre was led by the Vance & Hines Yamaha of Jamie e james, followed by the factory Harley- Davidson of Thomas Wilson. the Fast By Ferrucci Ducati of Shawn Higbee and the third Yoshimtira Suzuki, ridde n by Aaron Yates.

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