Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.ROAD RACE·.. Road World Championship Superbike Race~ries Round 6: Laguna Seca Raceway can always adjust, you're always adjusting, you're always qn top of the guy." As to whether he was worried that Bostrom might be able to pass him, DuHamel said: "If Ben would have made a move, I'd have an answer. It didn't happen because all the good passing places I was really strong on the brakes and really quick through the corners. So for him to pass he would have needed to stuff me or hit me pretty hard and I think that showed a lot of maturity on his part." "Every time we came up on traffic that guy (DuHamel) was so good that he'd get through, get a little gap," Bostrom said. "I'd race real hard, catch back up, and I had a little left over and I thought this was my only chance to beat my buddy, to get Miguel. And then I came up on some guys on the second to the last lap and he went through them and I didn't get through them and he opened up a gap and it pretty much determined the finishing position right there." At the end of the race Stroud found himself fending off Pridmore, though the Kawasaki rider found he'd waited 12 Mike Smith in the spring race by nearly 11 seconds in completing the 17-lap, 37.4-miJe race in 23 minutes, 34.718 seconds. He averaged 85.405 mph, bettering Smith's mark of 84.826 mph. Stroud finished third after getting caught up with backmarkers late in the race, then had to fend off a late charge by Kinko's Kawasaki's Jason Pridmore. Pridmore said he wasn't aggressive enough at the start and, like Stroud and most of the front-runners, ran into traffic problems that blunted his charge on the way to his third fourth-place finish of the year. Smokin' Joe's Honda's Steve Crevier came n~xt, the Canadian prevailing in the battle for fifth that was the most intense of the race. After getting caught out in tum two on the first lap, Crevier got consistently more aggressive, clocking his three fastest laps on the final three tours of the race and passing Moto Liberty's Gerald Rothman Jr. on the next-to-Iast lap. Behind Rothman came Erion Racing's Doug Toland, Muzzy Kawasaki's Mike Smith, and Hyd-Mech Saw's Owen Weichel. It was the sixth win of the season for DuHamel and with Kinko's Kawasaki's Thomas Stevens, his main championship rival, slowed to an 11th-place finish by a bad rear tire, the defending national champion was able to move closer to a second consecutive title. With two races remaining, at Sears Point and Las Vegas, DuHamel leads Stevens by 41 points, 299-258. There were no surprises at the start of the race - DuHamel jetted to the front of the 36-rider field with Bostrom, 4&6 Cycle's Todd Harrington, and Stroud in tow. Though it was only the first lap, Stevens already knew that he wouldn't be a contender. "On the warmup lap the tire wouldn't come in and I'm going, 'What's wrong?' And I thought it was leaking oil again; I had an oil leak in qualifying," Stevens said after finishing 11th. "I actually thought the thing's leaking oil. And then I had no traction in the rear and I was burning my front up trying to make up the difference by running it in and turning it on the front. (Above) The 600cc Supersport race gets started with Miguel DuHamel (1) leading Andrew Stroud (130), Ben Bostrom (11) and Jason Pridmore (7). (Right) The race came down to DuHamel leading Bostrom for the duration - teacher and student. .I just ran it in there so deep a couple of times trying to catch those guys I ran off the track. I thought it would be shredded, but it looked okay." At the front DuHamel and Bostrom and Stroud started to break away, followed by Harrington in front of Rothman and Pridmore, with Smith, Matt Wait and the struggling Stevens some distance behind. The lead pack made more of a break on the next lap and continued to leave the fight for fourth. There wasn't a discernible advantage for DuHamel, but he was controlling the pace and the others were watching.•They would soon be in traffic and that was where DuHamel would shine. Even in traffic he was able to speed up, judging the lapped riders well and taking maximum advantage of them.. "When he realized the guy was going to hold him up in the comers, he'd slow down a little bit to get a good line on him," Bostrom observed. The traffic worsened with about four laps to go, and that's when both ffostrom and Stroud would start to lose touch. Stroud was the first to drop back after being victimized by a backmarker who was getting out of the way of the two leaders. "We just hit some backmarkers and I was going to go around the outside of this guy and he left some room to go to the inside," Stroud said of the tum-nine incident. "He just ran it out wide to the edge of the track and I was on the wrong side of him and I Just shut it down and they pulled quite a big gap. And from then on I just couldn't pull it back in." That left it to Bostrom to challenge DuHamel and he tried, only to get balked entering tum lIon the next-tolast lap. The lead pair came upon a pair of slower riders and DuHamel forged his way by on the inside while'Bostrom was held up. That would be the crucial difference DuHamel needed to secure the win. "When he was riding behind me I was thinking, 'You know Ben, second place is not bad. You don't have to push it here buddy,''' DuHamel said. "It's always the same-case scenario. Once you're behind somebody riding in a race like that you're riding a pretty fast pace, a pretty quick clip. And you think that you can go a lot faster, and usually when you're in front you're the one that determines where you're going to brake, how much comer speed you're going to need. And when you're behind him you too long to make his move. By the time he got ready to go he found hirnseJf getting stuffed by lappers. ."1 was making a run at those guys and doing really fast laps, but I just ended up getting backmarkers at the wrong time and at the wrong places," Pridmore said after his second race back after breaking his leg earlier this year. "Towards the end, I was closing it down pretty good. Then I got a backmarker in tum'U, two of them. That screwed me." Still, he was within a bike length at the line. Knowing that, he realizes he has to be more aggressive sooner. "That was what I lost a lot of when I broke my leg, my aggressiveness at the start. Leaming to trust the tires on the first lap again. But I was better. that time," he said. Pridmore had worked his way up to fourth on the sixth lap, separating himself from the pack contesting fifth soon after, Rothman leading the pack with Stevens and Crevier chaSing. Matt Wait was part of the mix-up until the end of the 10th lap when he ran into a lapped rider in turn 11, running off the track before remounting to finish 13th. The lapped rider was Big Valley Honda's Jim Morgan, the Nevadan saying: "I got hit from behind. I didn't see it. Somebody fell and ran into me." Mor-

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