Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD RACE NAnONAL CHAMPIONSHIP ROAD RACE SERIES And that was how they finished: Marlo Duhamel (196) leads Jason Pridmore (7), Ben Bostrom (11) and Mark McDaniel (10) in the 750Cc Supersport race. didn't even expect to be right up with them, but the bike w.as working really good. ] got'a good drive corning out of the turns. Jason and ] kept on dicing. It was really fun riding with him." It didn't appear as though Pridmore, the current series points leader, would have any difficulty in capturing his third straight win of the series as he shot away from the line third in the 36-rider field while his teammate Mark Miller took the point followed by Hooters' James Randolph. Zero Gravity's Ben Bostrom quickly charged his way to the front after a mediocre start and was third when the pack came around on the opening lap. The second lap met with disaster, however, as Randolph lost the front end and crashed going into the ultra-fast turn five. His motorcycle shot forward and made contact with Miller just as the leader heeled over to make the curve, and the resulting impact sent Miller flying. The incident brought out a red flag as Miller appeared to be seriously injured but was lucky to suffer only a mild concussion in the incident. Randolph actually made repairs to his machine and was on the grid for the restart, but some confusion as to where he was actually supposed to grid would prove costly. On tne restart, AFM rider Mark McDaniel put his Team Polen Suzuki into the lead and held it for the first lap before he was overtaken by Duhamel. Pridmore was third again followed by Yoshimura Suzuki's Larry Pegram, who was 600-mounted, and Bostrom also aboard a 600. In the meantime, Randolph was running in the lead pack when AMA officials began to show him the black flag. The Northern California rider chose to ignore the flag for another lap or two before finally pulling into the pits. Needless to say, Randolph was unhappy. "My crew did a great job fixing my bike for the restart," Randolph said. "An AMA official was right there watching and told us that there would be a com- plete restart. So ] come around on the warmup lap and come back to my original starting position, and there's Jason Pridmore yelling, 'What the _ hell is that (expl~• tive) doing here?' He got· his mechanic to go get an AMA official. Then somebody finally wakes" up, and they decide to put me back. An official starts pushing me back, and he pushes me backwards right into another rider. They tried to push me back, but the t\;"ominute board was up, and they just threw up their hands and walked off the grid. Then on the restart, Bostrom hits me and nearly goes off the track and the AMA blackflags me. I'm disappointed. We had a great setup - even after we crashed. I'll be back." Pridmore soon slipped past McDaniel and joined up with Duhamel to steadily pull away from the rest of the pack and thus limit the amount of riders in contention for the win. By the sixth lap, the pair was three seconds ahead of a three-rider scrap for third that was taking place among McDaniel, Pegram and Bostrom. Pegram ran fourth just behind McDaniel, but Bostrom was constantly on the attack and managed to outbrake his former dirt track competitor going into the corkscrew to take the spot away. Bostrom then went after McDaniel but found the going much more difficult as his CBR600 didn't quite have the horsepower to match McDaniel's GSXR750 on the long front straightaway. Bostrom finally dived in on the brakes late in turn 11 and made a pass, only to slide out onto the rumble strip that lined the outside of the turn and lose track pOsition to both McDaniel and Pegram. "He (McDaniel) had a lot of straightaway speed, and we had a lot of corner speed," Bostrom said. "] just made a real aggressive pass and locked up the front end. ] wound up on the gators, and then ] had to battle with Larry again." Pridmore finally got the drive he was looking for out of turn six, and he got inside Duhamel to take the point on the uphill before the corkscrew. From there it appeared as though he would pull away. He soon had a four-second lead on Duhamel, but the Canadian rider was unfazed. . "After six or seven laps, ] started to slip and slide and decided to save my tires - that's where Jason got by me," Duhamel said. "Then] slipped some more and he got a couple seconds ahead of me. !lut in lapped traffic] caught backup." Lapped traffic certainly played a part, as Pridmore was slowed up just enough to allow Duhamel back in the chase, and soon Duhamel was right on Pridmore's back fender again. He made a pass for the lead on the brakes in turn two on lap 13. The lead battle then seesawed as Pridmore got back in fr,ont on the short straight between turns two and three only to yield again in the next corner. Pridmore appeared to be biding his time on the next lap, though the pair again swapped position on the same section of track. But it was on lap 14 that Pridmore made the one error that would cost him a shot at the victory. As the pair entered turn six, Prid-" more appeared to get into the corner too hot, and rather than risk hitting the ground, he wisely elected to stand it up and slide his motorcycle into the gravel trap. Pridmore remained uprigh~ got on the gas and dirt-tracked his way back onto the track, but the win was lost. Pridmore wound up second, but he still retains the points lead, holding a 13point advantage over Bostrom, 105-92. "It was a small mistake," Pridmore said. "And that was probably the one place on the track where you don't want to go wide. I just got in a little deep and couldn't get it turned. The championship's the big thing. But that was a great ride (by Duhamel), and I've got to give him credit. I'll tell you, it's not bad enough that I've got to deal with one Duhamel out there, but now I've got to deal with two. I kept waiting to see Mario out there, waiting to see Miguel out there, Yvon, Mrs. Duhamel... When's this going to end?" Third place finally went to Bostrom, who managed to put together a flawless circuit just before the finish to negate McDaniel's power advantage at the line. "] finally stuffed him real good in turn 11, and he got by me again on the front straight, but I outbraked him hard in turn two," Bostrom said. "Then] just ran as hard as ] could through the infield. Hey, ] had to beat him. I had a bet with (Dunlop Tire's) Jim Allen that I could beat all the Pirelli guys." "But these Dragons have come a long way," the fourth-placed McDaniel said. "I missed Thursday practice, so ] knew that my setup was a little off. ] could feel that my corner speed wasn't that good, so] wasn't surprised when those guys passed me. I still thought that I'd be able to beat Bostrom, but he was really good coming down the hill, and that's where I was off. He was riding good." Pegram came home a satisfactory fifth place in what was actually little more than a race-test session to sort out what he identified as "gremlins" on his Yoshimura Suzuki GSXR600. "I didn't intend to run the whole race," Pegram said. "] was just going to use it for practice, so we went out with old tires on it. Then ] got up to fourth and I thought, 'Shoot, I'm gonna stay out here and try to win it: Then the 'tires got real bad because they already had 20 laps on them, but we had fun." CN Laguna Seea Raceway Monterey, California Results: April 19, 1997 (Round 3 of 10) AMA HAMLINE 7S0c< SUPERSPORT FINAL: Mario Duhamel (Suz); 2. Jason Pridmore (SUZ)i 3. Ben Bostrom (Hon); 4. Mark McDaniel (Suz); 5. Larry Pegram (Suz); 6. David Stanton (Suz); 7. Eric Bostrom (Hon); B. Richard Alexander Jr. (Suz); 9. Owen Weichel (Kaw); 10. Steve Rapp <5uz); 11. Richard Kirk (Suz); 12. Dax Snow (Suz); 13. Dale Kieffer (Suz); 14. Rad Greaves (Hon); 15. William Luke (S,Uz); 16. Pablo Esca.lante (Han); 17. Craig Dabbs (Suz); 18. Thomas Montano (Han); 19. Ben yv'etch (Suz); 20. Jimmy Moore (Suz); 21. Matthew Guidera (Hon); 22. Terry Teske (Suz); 23. Michael Summers (Suz); 24. Victor Cabral (Suz); 25. Christopher Steele (Suz); 26. Roger Bell n (Suz); 27. Mike Sullivan (Suz); 28. Daniel Thorsen (Suz); 29. Dennis Burke; 30. Mike Klein (Han); 31. Karl Lowry Jr. (Han); 32. Brian Gibbs (Suz); 33. Akiharu Shigeno (Suz); 34. Anthony Lupe (Suz); 35. Mike Desmarais (Suz); 36. Pascal Picotte (Suz). Time: 26 min.. 26.010 sec. Distance: 17 laps. 38.046 miles. Average speed: 86.359 mph. Margin of victory: 2.010 sec. AMA TEAMLINE 750cc SUPERSPORT CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES POINTS STANDINGS (After 3 of 10 rou.ods): 1. Jason P.ridmore (105/2 wins); 2. Ben Bostrom (92); 3. Dale Kieffer (67); 4. Mark McDaniel (65); 5. Mario Duha",e1 (611,1 win); 6. Dax Snow (S7); 7. Richa.rd Alexander Jr. (51); 8. john Jacob; (46); 9. (TIE) Brian Cibbs/Kenich).ro lwahashi (42); 11. Chuck Sorenson (41); 12. Rad Greaves (39); 13. Mark Miller (34); 14. DOug Polen (32); lS. Seth Hah" (28); 16. Mike Sullivan (27); 17. Larry PegT.m (26); 18. (TJE) Ricky OrJando/David Stanton (25); 20. (TIt:) Eric Bostrom/Thomas MontanolJimmy Moore/Steve Patterson/James Randolph (24). Upcoming Rounds: Round 4 - Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, June 7 Round 5 - Loudon; New Hampshire. June 14 AMA En Fueisilubricants 250cc Grand Prix series Round 3: Laguna 5eca Raceway And another By Mark Hoyer Photo by Kinney Jones MONTEREY, CA, APR. 20 ike the suspense. in the Elf Fuels/Lubricants AMA .250cc Grand Prix class, Team Oliver Yamaha's Rich Oliver was simply gone. Race after race, point after point the Oliver juggernaut moves for~ard and Laguna Seca was simply no different. Say it with me; Oliver won the faster of two heat races to score pole position, moved to the lead on the first lap of the race and in a typically calculated manner stretched out an early lead by riding a notch above everyone else to take the win after leading the most laps. "The race was beautiful," Oliver said of his 13th 250cc GP win in a row. "I felt good for the first 10 laps and then I got into heavy traffic and decided to look at my pit board and had like plus 12 or plus 14 and thought, 'Well, you're an idiot if you take one 6f these" guys out when you're lapping them: I really kind of parked it through the lappers, but once I got clear again ] could just pick up my times again." Moto Liberty's Randy Renfrow had the lead for a couple of corners, and after Oli vel" made his pass, Renfrow looked set to finish this third race of the season where he had finished the other two - in second place. Unfortunately, the veteran 250cc rider crashed, without serious injury, on the 12th lap while running a very secure, lonely second. "Either something happened or that was a fairly serious case of stupidity," Renfrow said of his turn-five crash. "I'm actually all right. I broke a small bone in my hand and I bruised myself up real good, twisted myself around a little bit." The saviors of the race were the trio of Performance Machine's Roland Sands, Barnett Tool & Engineering's Matt Wait and Team World Spo,rts Import's Mark Foster, who became involved in a late-race scrap for second through fourth place. After knifing through the pack from his row-nine starting position - the result of a jumped heat-race start Sands made it into third place by the end of lap two with Wait, who had started one row behind Sands as a result of a similar penalty, working through the pack with him. '1 think we got about 30 guys on the first lap, which is a personal best for me," Sands said of his early-race run with Wait. "It was pretty exciting. I figured we'd just hook up and kind of rail through everybody and that's what we did. By the first lap we were' both into the top 10 and we just kept picking L

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