Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD RACE AMA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP ROAD RACE SERIES Round 6: Brainerd International Raceway AMAlPro Honda Oils 600cc Su ers ort Series Picotte w Oliver s in s ins he "even whe n I wa s r a cing g uys lik e (Joh n) Kocin sk i an d (Jim my) Filice. I was always able to rid e arou nd the out-' side. I gu ess nothi ng bad has ever happened to me down there so I don't have any bad experience. The bike was wo rking well, obviously, in fift h and six th gea r. It was rea lly mo to ri ng along. It likes a high -speed race track and I knew this was one of the only chances we were go ing to have to really let the bike show how much speed it has . So I was really mo tiva ted to do well this weekend." (Abo ve) Ric h Oliver (97) led alm ost the entire 600cc Superspori Iinai. He eve ntually had to give way to Pascal Picott e (21). (Left) The top three - Oliver , Picotte and Aaron Yates ce lebra te. By Paul Carruthers Photos by Hen ny Ray Abrams BRAINERD, MN, JUNE 29 t's difficult to overshadow the winner of any race, especially one as dramatic as th e 600cc Su perspo rt final a t Bra in erd In terna tio nal Ra cew ay . Bu t Yamaha 's Rich Olive r was able to d o just that. W hi le Yos himu ra Suzu ki 's Pascal Picotte came o ut of a five-way slugfest to win his third 600cc race of the year, it wa s Oliver who ga rne red the most attention - mos tly beca use not many had actually seen him race before. Sure they've seen Oliver race, but they've never seen him really race · at least not lately. And definitely not at the front of a 600cc Supersport race. Most AMA road racing fans are used to one thing when it comes to the veteran twostroke racer: Oliver running away and hiding from the res t of the 250cc Grand Prix pack. Suddenly , they were witnessi ng Oliver doing the same to the ultra-compe titive 600cc Su persport field . Charg- I 8 ing hard from the ge t-go, Oliver ran a t the front of the race for 12 of the 13 laps. It was only on the final lap tha t Picotte was able to wdrk his way a rou nd th e all-time 250cc GP win lead er - and only just. At the finish it was Picotte by .570 of a second , with Oliver, Yoshim ura Suzuki's Aaron Yates, Kinko's Kawasaki's Jamie Hackin g and Smokin' Joe's Honda's Miguel DuHamel crossing the stripe in rapid succession. Clea rly, though, Oliver had made his mark, using a high line in the fas test two corners on the track - turns one an d two - to consistently forge ahead. His efforts should make certain of one thing: Pundits who utter the wo rds , "But he can 't ride a four-stroke, blah, blah, blah," should be permanently silenced. Given a little b it more experience with the rough -and -t umble, elbow-to-elbow world of Supersport racing. Oliver will be a consistent threat. . But let's no t forget the effort put forth by Picotte. The French Canadian bided his time until the final few laps, " coming from the back of the five-rider pack to take the lead on the fina l go - around. From the re, no one was ge tting by. H is teammate Yates was also ham m e ring away in those fin al la ps. Th e Georgian had come thro ugh from a poor start to catch the lead group an d he was hell bent on fin is hi ng o n the p odiu m. Although he managed to pus h past bot h DuHamel and Hacking. his run at Oliver came up just short at the finish line d espite a la te-brakin g a ttem p t in th e final comer. Hacking held off DuHamel at the line fo r fo ur th, and then ca me the seco nd . ho rd e of rid er s fighting for sixth. Th at s po t w e nt to Zero G ravit y' s Be n Bostrom , w it h Smo ki n ' Jo e's St e ve Cre vier, Eric Bos tro m , Yam aha's Tom Kipp, and Barnett Tool & Enginee ring 's Ma tt Wait filling out the top 10. DuHam e l m a y n ot h a v e wo n h is fou r th st ra ig ht 600cc Su persport race, bu t his fifth place d id little to cha nge his status as cham pion-elect in the cla ss. Thanks in part to th e yellow-flag inci dent at Loudon, DuHamel leads Picotte by 14 points. Yates is a further three points behind, with Crevier fo ur th a t 161. Oliver vaults to fifth in the se ries standings with 145 points. The race featured two starts, the first stopped by a crash on the opening lap that involved th ree riders . Fortunately, no ne of the three were seriously injured. That start had bee n led by the pole-sitting Oliver, though Eric Bostrom had pushed his way through in tum four. It mattered not, as the race was stopped as the pack crossed the start /finish line for the first time. Hacking nailed the holesh ot o n the seco nd start, but Oliver wasn't goi ng to be denied - especially in turns one ana two. "I've always been fairly competitive down throug h there," Oliver said later, The lead pack quickly broke away: Oliver leading Picotte, Du Ha mel a nd Hacki ng, wit h Yates on the move from a poor start. 'The first start , everybody sprea d out a nd I go t a pretty good draft," Ya tes said. "I we n t to the outside an d cou ld n' t tum. I had to let way off and every body started shoo ting right by - I was about 10th. The second start, everybody got in two lines and I wa s wa nting to go on the ou tsid e a nd I wa s stu ck on the insid e. There were so m any of u s goi ng in to that tum - it wa s crazy. Going in to tum two , a couple of guys went past me and I jus t started passing them back. I knew I had to ge t up wi th " these guy s to run the d ra ft up th e s traig htaway, o r else they were jus t going to keep pull in g away. I fin ally go t clo se eno ugh to be ther e with ' em , but I thin k th e jetling was off a bit. It wa s a little lazy on the straightaway." " Bu t hi s ha rd ridin g in the co rner s more than mad e up for it. Yates had one bad m oment in turn four, th e Su zuki kicking him up ou t of the sea t. Appare n tly, he' d ha d e no ug h o u t-of- th esea ters to make this one seem mundane. At the po st-race pr ess confe rence, Yates couldn' t even reca ll th e tu m -fou r in cident. Me a nwhile, d es pi te t he pressure from behind. Oliver con tinued to take care of bus iness at the front. "O nce I go t into th e lead , I felt really comfo rta ble beca use I' m used to leadi ng a lot," Oliver said. "I just wo rked o n my lines a nd tr ied to im prove . The ti re s sta rted goi ng off a bit toward the middle of the race, so I was fighting that, seeing ho w I coul d ma ke it wor k anywa y . I bas icall y figured th at when th e w h ite flag ca me out, or th e lap befo re , th at e ve ry o ne was g o ing to a tt ack m e which th ey pretty mu ch d id . I tried to s h u t som e of th e p a ssi ng lines off towar d the end - it too k me a couple of races to learn .that in Supers port. I had a grea t run." Fina lly, Picotte jumped to the fron t with some har d bra king of his own in tum three on the final lap. From ther e it wa s a ma tt er o f p ro tecting the in sid e Iine h e was mainl y worryin g abou t Yates. " It wasn' t an easy race, " Picotte said. "These guys ran a reall y stro ng pace Aa ron, Rich , Jamie, Miguel. I was kind of wor ried a bo u t Mi guel, because h e always ma kes his las t move in the la st minute and that's w ha t he was do ing in the last lap . I started testing the d raft too early in that race. I was ge tting their draft a little bit too soo n and they we re drafting pa s t after th at. I thi nk I got lucky a little bit because in the last corner, two laps from the end, there was a lapped rider, an d all those gu ys slowed down a little bit. 11 was perfect timing for me to get a nice gap betw een me and Hacking. Th en I drafted Aa ro n, a nd Rich and Migu el were kind of weavi ng. I won't weave like that because I got screwed up at Daytona a few years ago doing tha t wit h Colin (Edwards) . I jus t went toward the wa ll and tried to catch > >

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