Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ning up, and I'm thinking, 'I don't know if this is a good idea: " Yamaha's Tom Kipp, who used the same hard rear Dunlop 283, made a run at Chandler before dropping off to finish a lonely fifth, well in front of Yoshimura Suzuki's Pascal Picotte, who was having his own tire problems. His was also wheel-spin, but it was so bad, he thought the tire was losing air and he nearly pitted. Following Picotte was Harley-Davidson's Chris Carr, who'd made a run at him before deciding he couldn't be aggressive enough in traffic, then backingdown. Then came the second Ferracci bike of Gerald Rothman Jr., trailed by Larry Pegram, the Yoshimura Suzuki rider whose arms pumped up from wrestling his GSXR600 through the earlier Supersport race and never recovered. In 10th place, and fir t privateer, was the Tilley's Harley-Davidson of Tripp abies. Racing full-out for 39 laps on the demanding and treacherous 12-turn, l.6-mile course tends to take its toll, and today was no different. Though Mladin's win was mostly uneventful, there was a lot happening behind him. Zero Gravity's Ben Bostrom was the first of the factory riders to check out, the young Californian pitching his Honda RC45 in turn one on the 12th lap. He was soon joined on the sidelines by H-D's Thomas Wilson, who rode off the ,adius the front tire and tipped under on the exit of a left-hander of the north infield. Vance & Hines Ducati's Thomas Stevens was the next to depart, a problem with his electric shifter shortening his day just when he was having his best ride of the year. He was in fifth at the time p.e was forced out, on the 16th lap. The last of the prominent nonfinishers was Smokin' Joe's Honda's Miguel DuHamel, who lost the front end in the turn-six bowl while running in third on the 20th lap. For DuHamel, it was his first race crash since the Laguna Seca race in April of 1996. That spill proved fatal to his championship hopes last year and, considering this year's title aspirants, this one just might as well. Mladin won the 39-1ap, 62.4-mile race in a ne~ race record of 48 minutes, 38.710 seconds, at an 'average speed of 79.966 mph. The victory moved him into second in the championship with 141 points, 19 less than Chandler and four more than Crevier. Yoshimura Suzuki's Yates is fourth with 131, two in front of teammate Picotte. DuHamel dropped to sixth, with 116. All weekend, Mladin said that pole position wasn't that important; to him, being on the front row was what mattered. 'and he proved it the first chance he got. Jetting from the second spot, he moved down into turn one first, beating • Chandler to the comer. "I wanted to get the start; I was determined to get the start," Mladin said. "1 had a little practice start on the warmup lap, and I adjusted my clutch a little bit to suit what I wanted to do off the starting line, and it worked perfectly. Doug (Chandler) was right next to me, but 1 got the power to the ground a bit and squeezed him a little bit. He sort of had to back off. I gave him plenty of room. I didn't squeeze him into the wall or anything, but he knew I wasn't going' to let him in. After that, we put our heads down and started running the quick pace right from the start." That meant that he was able to leave the rest behind and put half the front ot (Left) Aaron Yates completed his best weekend of the year with his runner-up finish. (Below) Third place went to Smokin' Joe's Honda's Steve Crevier in what was also his best outing of the season. straight on Yates, who'd moved into second on the ninth lap. "I noticed Mat started pulling away, and Doug was kind of in my way a little bit in a couple places, and I had to stick it under him and get by him if I wanted to be up there with Mat," Yates said. So the top two started to clear out, while the pack behind them sorted themselves out. The gap from first to second was elastic: Yates closing to within about .4 of a second on the fourth lap and holding it there for a while after Mladin had trouble with a lapper in turn three. "Aaron (Yates) made up a couple of seconds right there on that lap, and he was right behind me, and I thought we were going to have a race on our hands," Mladin said. "1 had a little bit of help; he (Mladin) overshot tum three over there one time, and that allowed me to make up a good second, maybe two on him," Yates said. 'Then the traffic started coming, and he started coming to me and then we were together. I got through traffic better. There were probably a couple of times I could have stuck it under him. I kind of wanted to ride there with him for a little while. But then, the next group of traffic, he got through them a little better than 1 did. And I kind of had to hang back and wait for my chance:' Mladin had a 1.54-second lead on the 20th lap, and by then they'd both had more than their share of backrnarkers. "For a few laps, he (Yates) was behind me, and then we got another bit of lapped traffic," Mladin said. "And 1 know 1 got through a couple of them in a spot where he wasn't going to get them, and I put my head down and 1 started running a few high 13s and stuff, and we started pulling the gap again and 1was happy with that." Yates agreed: "When I got there with him, 1 noticed in a couple of spots he was laying around. l.thought he was just going to cruise and I'd just hang around with him a little bit. There were a couple of opportunities where 1 think 1 could have stuck it under him, but I didn't take that chance, and then we got in traffic and he got away and that was about it:' The margin steadily grew from the halfway point on, growing to more than seven seconds at one point, before Mladin finished the ~ace with a standup wheelie. "I was nowhere near as comfortable in traffic as I was at Phoenix or Road America," Mladin said. "1 didn't have the feel for the front end today. 1 didn't have the feel for the front tire: 1 couldn't be as aggressive as I've been before through traffic and know that I'm going to stick it in. 1 had to be a little more cautious. But, fortunately, after the first set of lappers, we got a pretty good run through the rest of them." "It was pretty tough," Yates admitted. "My bike got to wobbling and shaking pretty bad." Crevier had the toughest pa th to the podium. Eighth on the first lap, he sliced his way up to, fourth a lap later, and joined a pack that included his teammate DuHamel, Stevens, and Kipp, all of whom were chasing Chandler. All but Kipp got by him on the 14th lap, when Chandler settled into sixth. "1 couldn't get no drive," Chandler said. "1 was actually short-shifting in a couple of places, because the thing would start spinning up when I'd get it up in the rpm. 1 just couldn't stick it in there. 1 about duffed it here (in turn 11) when Thomas (Stevens) and Steve (Crevier) got by me. We had three lappers in front of us, and 1 come up alongside of one to go around them to be on the inside for the right, and he decided to use up the whole race track. He took me out to the edge, and so I'm in the marbles and tucked the front three times. 1 thought 1 was going to run straight through the grass. 1 gathered it back up and then Steve (Crevier) and Thomas (Stevens) came by me." Benefiting from the exits of Stevens and DuHamel, Chandler cruised to fourth. Stevens departed on the 16th lap while in fifth. Vance & Hines Ducati crew chi~f Jim Leonard explained that Stevens' electric shifter has a kill function, and it appeared that Stevens hit it with his foot. The team had been having problems with the shifters all week and had gotten some welded on Friday. "We never had time to get them developed," Leonard said. The team also had to replace the engine after breaking one on Saturday. Crevier was behind DuHamel at this point, but not for long, with 'DuHamel tossing it away in turn six. '1t was my mistake - my stupid mistake," DuHamel said. '1 got into tum six too hard and locked up the front brake. That was it, own and out. This is definitely not the way 1wanted things to tum out. At the time, all I wanted to do was keep a steady gap between myself and Aaron Yates until 1could make a move:' At the time of the crash, he was about 5.5 seconds back. That set the order of the top nine on the 20th lap, and with 19 to go, it never changed. "1 got spanked today," Crevier began, after finishing almost 16 seconds behind Yates. "And Aaron's coming on strong now; and Doug, he's just so consistent and smooth, and my teammate Miguel, he's hot. There's just so much talent out here. It's not going to be easy. 1 definitely want my shot at winning some races, but I've got to put in a little more effort than what 1 put in today." After Crevier came Chandler, followed by Kipp, who saw, for the 10 laps that they ran together, that his bike and Chandler's were both squirming badly. t--. 0\ 0\ ....... 7

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