Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

The ord er remained fluid for the next se ve ra l laps, with Kip p going under Mlad in heading into turn three on lap fo u r, Cha ndler takin g th e lead going under Du Hamel in turn one on lap six, the n DuHamel back in fro nt on lap eight with a bo ld mo ve down the hill into turn n ine that al so saw him turn the fastest lap of the race. After that the leaders settled into a co m fo rtab le pace and not much happ ened u ntil the 16th la p w he n they bega n to lose Mlad in a nd Yates , w ho ha d pa ssed Pegr am on the 14th lap . When th e sta rter d ispl a y ed the crossed flag s it was s ti ll D u H amel, Chand ler and Kipp, all nose to tail, th en a co u ple o f seconds to Ya tes, Mladin an d Peg ra m, the three getting togeth er ap p roac hi ng th e halfwa y poin t, a n d W il s o n, Higbee , a n d th e fa lt e r i ng Picotte . Th e 23rd lap was when the ac tion carne, Ch an dl er trying DuHamel in tu rn two wi th Kipp also trying on the inside of Chandler a corner later to take over second . Late in the lap , in a bit of irony, Kipp banged in to Du Ha me l in turn 11 and took the lead for the first tim e. ''1' d like to a pol ogize to Mig uel for my inside pass when I took the lead," Kipp lat er said . "It wasn't exactly the most ge ntlemanly pass I've made." "I know Tom and he was just going for a pass and (there was) a little bit of mis ju dg me n t th e r e . An d we came togethe r and we hi t each o ther. That's part of racing," DuHamel said. "We just ca n ' t always ask 'can 1 go by pl ease?' We d o n ' t normally do that , but this weeke nd the track almost recommends tha t. 1t's reall y hard to get by." It wou ld only be two mo re laps before DuHamel returned the favo r, though less forcibly, going by Kip p exiting turn two on the 24th lap to take the lead for good . Three laps later a n d C h a n d le r was also by Kipp a n d the (Opposite page) Larry Pegram (72) led the opening lap of the Superbike National at the New Ha mpshire International Speedway. Miguel DuHamel (1) gives chase. (Above) DuHamel and Doug Chandler (10) stayed close for the duration. (Right) Tom Kipp qualfied on the pole and finis hed third in the National. Kilm'S little surp_rs-.e i -= =:...---_ T wo factors un ique to New Hampshire Internati on al Speedway went a lon g way in detennining the fast qualifiers. The first was traffic. The 12-turn, t.6- mile circu it offers few places to pass and many to get held up in. Smokin' Joe's Miguel DuHamel was one of the riders most affected by slower riders, one in pa rticular parking himself in fro nt of the defend ing National Champion in the last few turns of the final lap, denying DuHamel a chance a t tbe pole position. The second oddity of this track is tbat the timing is done in the final com ers, not on tbe strai gh taway at start/ finish. The rea son for that is that th e transponder equ ipm e nt wouldn' t work properly fro m the start/finish line and the timing tower is in fron t of tum 12. Wha t it did was allow riders to go faster tbro ugh the final set of turns, then zip hard left down pit row , a shorter path to trip the timing lights than if they would have had to continue on their lap . Depending on wh o you asked, the difterence could be as much as a coup le tenths of a seco nd . Because it was perfectly legal it was sometbing that eve ryone could have don e, but only a few did while the others groused about it. An AMA official said it would be changed for 1997. Vance & Hines Yamaha's Tom Kipp (right) ea rn ed his .first pole po siti on of th e yea r, the Ohioan clocking a very fast lap on his penultimate tour, then taking the lap record with less than a minute to go in Saturday's timed qualifying session. He'd done it on a machin e which he said had been softened for the po int-and-shoot Loudon tra ck, a circuit tbat puts a premium on smoothness and concentration. . "They did a good job taming tbe bike down for this race track ," Kipp sa id after taking his first po le since the last race of the 1995 season at Firebird Internationa l Raceway. "The po we r cha racteristics, the chassis. This track is all abou t throttle contr ol. Keep ing tbe fro nt wheel down is important. They d id a little of every thing to the bike, all geared towa rd making it easy for me to ride." Kipp's time of 1:13.743 for an average speed of 78.109 mph was just und er Fast by Ferracci 's Fred d ie Spencer's 1995 time of 1:13.908. "Things wer en' t exactly going too well this morning." Kipp said . ..It's been kind of an on /off day for us . We made some pretty drastic changes going into this qualifying session. I knew the first three or four laps into this sessio n that the bike felt so much better than it did this morn ing that I knew that I was going' to be able to do consisten tly fast times . I wasn't pos itive that we'd be sitting on the pole, but I knew we had a good race setup an d certainly a good qualifying setup." The on ly otbe r ride r in the 13s was Smokin' Joe' s Racing's Miguel DuHamel, the defending National Cha mpion wishing he'd gotten the single point that comes with the pole position . "We' re disappointed abou t not getting pole. I am very disa ppointed abo ut no t getting po le, and so close, too," DuHamel said .:"And Tom (Kipp), he does n't eve n need the po le. I'll have to talk to that guy . If it wo uldn't be for the pol e we wou ldn 't really care, but every po int cou nts and to lose one more point like this is just one of tbose things. Like I said, we're disappointed but we almos t got it a nd we' re a lot faster than a lot of other peo ple out there and we were crank ing som e really hard laps out there. We'll go home, forget abo u t this one, a nd ge t read y to go racin g tomorrow ." As for traffic, DuHamel said : " There were guys in front of me on my last lap, I had a good flying lap , and it completely destroyed my lap. It must hav e been like a 15. There was nothing I could do. Some times you want to stu ff them , but you d on't want to take them down . It' s aggravating. Especi ally on a little track like this ." . Fast by Ferrucci's Larry Pegra m was third-fast est, everyone assuming that the tight circuit would favor the Ducati and Pegram proving them right by turning a fast lap with less than five minute'S remaining . He attributed his success to a different philosophy on riding the Italian Vtwin. "The motorcycle, at eve ry race track tbat w e've been at th is year, didn't slide the rear tire that much and I've ad apted to the way tba t bike is. I've ad apted to rid ing witbout sliding tbe rear tire beca use I think that' s the bes t wa y to ride a Duca ti," Pegram said . "But here, that method wasn't working. To not slide the rear tire, I was having to be too eas y on the gas off the corne rs. So about the last half of tbat qu alifying session I started riding that more or less like I do a four-cylinde r. I was j~lst letting it sp in off the comers. It seemed to work. We did a couple of good laps. I saw that the bike was movrng around a lot more under me and that's no t the characteristics that the bike has been to me at an y other track, SO it' s taking me a little bit of time." Making his first appearance of the year on the fron t row was Harley-Davidson 's Thoma s Wilson, the Ohioan dropping Muzzy Kawasaki's Doug Chandler to the second row as time wound down. "l r's not so much that it's a goo d track for the Harley, it's jus t that there's not a bunch of straigh taways where we lose on top speed . So it makes it more like an even ride," Wilson said . "It's still not, but it's a lot closer than it usually is." 111eJl came the Muzzy Kawasakis of Chandler and teammate Mike Smith, with Chandler consistently among the fastest in the second session which Smi th had to sit out after destroying his ZX-7R in Saturday morning's practice session. "The biggest problem today was just traffic. I thought we could ha ve bee n up there a lot closer tba n it showed," Cha nd ler said . "I'm not goi ng to get bothered an d go changing thin gs around because I think we think we have a good race se tup for tomo rrow." Chandler said he thought about wa iting for a gap in the traffic to go for a flyer, "bu t it seemed that eve ry time I'd hang back there'd be a gro u p of guys in front of me." Smith sat out the session and , for the first time he could remem ber, watched quali fying. As it turned out , it pro ved to be e ucational, d " It was actua lly pr etty good because I could see w ho was going fast w here," Smitb said, mentioning tum one, as well as going up the hill to turns five and six. "It' s a rea l beneficia l thin g. It's kind of cool. Because what you can see with your eyes is a lot different of what other people tell you they saw with their eyes ." Mat Mladin was the first Suzuki, qualifying seventh on a track that he clearly didn' t like. It so bothered him that he had to alte r his riding sty le. "Look at the way I race," he sa id . "I' m fairly aggressive and I like to stick it in on the front end fairly hard. And there are spo l' on this track that you just can' t do that. You can do that, but I'd like to walk away at the end of the day." 7

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