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Within two laps of the start, the race became a three-way battle for the lead between Zampach, obles and Hanrahan, followed several seconds back by a -duel for fourth between Shawn Conrad and Rick Kirk. Hanrahan appeared to be barely hanging on, because he dropped back several times and then caught back up as Zampach and Nobles began dicing again and slowed each other down. Hanrahan led briefly on lap four, dropped back, and then caught the leaders on the last lap. . Zarnpach had been testing draft passes on the front straight for several laps. Twice he pulled out too late, but coming to the white flag he pulled out earlier and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately for him, he never got a chance to duplicate the move on the last lap because Nobles manipulated Zarnpach into leading the last lap so that Nobles could draft him at the line. "It ain't nothing Scotty hasn't done before," Nobles said. "He had gotten a real good drive out of turn 14 (coming to the white flag). I think I could have gone on around him before turn one, but instead of chancing it and slowing us up so Hanrahan could catch us, I just opted to stay behind and push us. Around turn five, Hanrahan had gotten close enough to where he could come around both of us going into turn five and he kind of botched us up. But he got in there a little hot so I got back behind Zampach and Zampach had gotten away from us a little bit. I ran him down on the back straightaway. Instead of trying to race with him heading into turn 14 and having a chance on Hanrahan coming up in there, I decided to just draft by him (on the front straight)." Road America Elkhart Lilke, Wisconsin Results: August 4, 1996 (Round 5 of 9) MOBIL 1 TRIUMPH SPEED TRIPLE CHALLENGE: 1. Tripp Nobles; 2. Scott Zampach; 3. James Hanrahan; 4. Shawn Conrad; 5. Rick Kirk; 6. Michael Fitzpntrick; 7. Michael Gage; B. David McGrath; 9. John Scheehser; 10. Thomas Murray; 11. Benajmin Welch; 12. Robert Wrublevski; 13. Greg Field. Time: 20 min., 4.386 sec. Distance: 8 laps, 32 miles Average Speed: 95.650 mph Margin of Victory: 0.195 sec. MOBIL 1 TRIUMPH SPEED TRIPLE CHALLENGE C'SHIP SERIES POINT STANDLNGS (After S of 9 races): 1. Scott Zampach (160/3 wins); 2. James Hanrahan (147/1); 3. David McGrath (122); 4. Michael Fitzpatrick (121); S. (TIE) Rick KirklJohn Scheehser (116); 7. Shawn Conrad (111); 8. Benjamin Welch (102); 9. Tripp Nobles (99/1); 10. Thomas Murray (86); 1I. William White (84); 12. Michael Gage (72); 13. Devin Battley (68); 14. Ty Howard (64); IS:Ray Hixon (39); 16. Thomas Fournier (37); 17. Blaine Paulus (33); 18. (TIE) Dav;d Hull/lUck Shaw/ Adam Lewis (32). Upcoming Rounds: Round 6 - Portland, Oregon, August 11 Round 7 - ~OCono, Pennsylvania, September 1 NASB Harley·Davidson TwinSports Series Round 4: Road America By John Flory EtKHART LAKE, WI, AUG. 4 he Harley-Davidson Twin Sports race was a fine example that good things do come in threes. In this case it was three good riders - Matt Wait, Ben Bostrom and Scott Zampach - running away from the rest of the field to battle on their oWn for the top finishing positions, a battle that ~ (Left) Matt Wait leads Ben Bostrom and Scott Zampach in TwinSports competition. Though Bostrom had the lead going into the final corner, Wait blasted by and took the win. (Below) MaS8hiro Iizuka (8) and his Moto Liberty teammate Marcello Del Guidice finished first and second in the International 125cc GP series. would continue until the very last turn on the very last lap. In·the end it was Wait who would draft by his archrival Bostrom, exiting the last turn to take the win, with Zampach taking third behind Bostrom at the line. In the mad dash to the finish line, Wait dodged and weaved trying to break any draft that the trailing riders might have. Both Bostrom and Zampach followed him as best they could, but Wait secured his third victory of the season. Though he finished in third place, Zampach still has the most pointS in the overall series standings with 117. Wait is second with 105 and Todd Evans, seventh today, is third with 92. Much as the Speed Triple Challange race had unfolded, the Twin Sports race quickly evolved into a tlu:ee-way race, only a much closer one. Wait, Bostrom and Zampach battled in a tight bunch right off the start, while Brian Gibbs trailed just out of reach behind them. Dave Estok started last but charged spectacularly up through the field, catching and passing Gibbs on the nextto-last lap. Unfortunately, he was unable to make contact with the leaders. As the leading trio powered out of the last turn, Wait took the lead from Bostrom and started weaving up the front straight in an effort to break the draft. Zampach trailed close behind. "Bostrom led into turn 14, (followed by) Wait and myself," Zampach said. "1 got a really great drive out. Then Wait just drafted by Bostrom and as soon as he got by he started to weave and go across the track. Bostrom was fighting frantically to follow right in his tracks and couldn't figure out what (Wait) was going to do. It was kind of out of control. But it was a really good race. There were a lot of times that I think I was closer to other riders than I ever have been while racing." Wait's tactic worked - Bostrom and Zampach were unable to draft him - and he took the win, his third of the season. After the race the top three. were each fined $100 for weaving.' Zampach took the long view about his third-place finish 'Tm happy to take third," said racing veteran Zampach. "It's really cool being 34 and they're like 19 or 20. And they've been around so they're not new-to-the-sport kids but they're still really young. So I feel proud that I can come out and put on a great show. My team does an awesome job but they're (Wait and Bostrom's teams) a little more fine-tuned on their engine builders. I rode for those guys (Wait's team) at Laguna so I saw. We have a lot of younger guys and they need the years of experience to build that perfect Wilson puts Harley on p-=---.:ol=---=-e T _ he sensation of Saturday's qualifying sessions was Thomas Wilson's near-lap record aboard the factory Harley-Davidson VR1000 to secure pole position for the first of the two F-USA races. In the first session, Wilson had the fastest limes until the last five minutes, when Sadowski went out and turned a 2;14.287, 0.3 second faster than Wilson's best. In the second session, Wilson ran two laps in the 2;125, the fastest a 2:12.624, one-tenth faster than Larry Pegram's pole time for the AMA National here in June and less than three-tenths slower than the track record of 2:12.31 set last year by Mike Hale on the Smokin' Joe's Honda RC45. Beverly Sadowski, a highly eXperienced timer, was timing for husband Dave (who had fast time at that point) and thought she had made an error when she got Wilson's first 2:12. She knew it was no mistake when the next lap was ·also a 2:12_ Both Wilson and his teammate Chris Carr were going much faster than they had in June. Wilson slashed five seconds off his June qualifying time while Carr dropped a full two seconds. The initial reaction in the pits was that the Harleys were using special qualifying tires. According to both team manager Steve Scheibe and the Dunlop tire crew, they were simply running a soft-compound race tire. Wilson said he was not sure the tire would last the full race distance, though, so effectively it was something like a qualifying tire. Asked if he thought Wilson was using a qualifying tire, Sadowski said, "No, he just rode his bag oro" Wilson had to, because the Harley was clearly down on top speed compared to the other top contenders. The usual hopeful reactions to a fast time circulated through the pits: "But how many 2;125 can he string together?" . Sadowski qualified second, 1.6 seconds back. He was fastest in the first session and that time held up for most of the second session. When he went out late in the second session to try to improve it, his motor went sour, stranding him o,ut on the course. Team Labelle tuner Mike Velasco changed the motor Saturday afternoon, installing a slightly smaller-displacement one for Sunday. Sadowski's teammate and defending Formula USA champion Chris Taylor qualified third, 0.6 second behind Sadowski. Fritz Kling qualified fourth after a series of problems during practice and qualifying. Not surprisingly, the two Valvoline Suzukis qualified fourth and fifth. In a hint of things to come, Munroe put his 750cc machine into sixth spot on the grid, just ahead of Carr on the other Harley, Zampach on the Saxon Triumph, and Williams on the Dutchman Racing "B" bike.