Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~------------------------------------------ -- neither was having an easy time of it. Picotte struggled from a lack of grip, while Yates was r id i ng injured after crashing in the 600cc Supersport final earlier in the day. Harley-Davidson's Thomas Wilson rode mostly alone to finish eighth, his second-best finish of the season. Then came Vance & Hines Ducati's Thomas St evens, struggling after the team missed badly on his setup. Tenth place went to Harley's Chris Carr, the last rider on the lead lap , with 11th going to Canadian Kawasaki rider Michael Taylor. The last of the factory riders, Fast By Ferracci's Gerald Rothman Jr. and Yoshimura Suzuki's Larry Pegram, finished 13th and 14th - with Rothman crashing and remounting, and Pegram pitting for a new rear tire early in the race. The AMA 's first -ever Superbike National in the state of Colorado got under way beneath bright skies and with a Pascal Picot te holes hot. It was a lead that lasted for roughly two corners. That's when DuHamel shot past, late on the bra kes into the ha irp in . Itwas th e begin ning of th e end for any hopes Picotte had of wi nning, and he lost second p lace a turn later when Kipp we nt by. Picotte would eventually drop to sixth. Hit was slidi ng in every corner," Picotte said later. 'The bike was totally different - it was either the shock or the ti re. It was spinning in sixth gea r, going sideways. I really thought I had a shot . This morning the thing was working so good." By this point, Rothman's day was off to a to ug h start, as he'd crashed the Duca ti, He 'd re mount tu finish 13th. By the end of 'the third lap, the top three were set: DuHamel leading Kipp and Chand ler. But the pack behind them we re still in touch, led by Picotte, with Crevier, Mladin, Yates and Pegram giving chase. Then carne an al ready-lonely Stevens, ahead of Doug Polen, Carr and Wilso n. Superbike first -timer Jason Prid- ahead of Mladin in the points chase. "I can't complain," Chandler said . "I'm very happy with finishing second. We extended our lead and the only one to gain un us was Miguel. I would have liked to beat him, but Mat's (Mladin) my biggest threat and he's the one I've got to think about right now. "In the middle of the race, I was pretty comfortable sitting where I was at," Chandler added . "We did have some breaks in the traffic and those guys would put a gap on me, but it wasn't that tough to make it back up. But as it HyperCy- starts winding dO\\-"I1, everyone starts to cle Suzuki, and he would move all the way up to 11th before a dead ba ttery forced him ou t. It was on the third lap that Kipp took th e lea d for th e first tim e, the O h ioa n o u tb ra ki ng Du Ha mel goi ng into th e hairpin. Kipp led for 10 laps - and even open ed a slight ga p - befo re giving way on the exit uf the hairpin wh en he lust pick it up a bit and Miguel just kinda inc hed away. We got a little bit back, but not enough towa rds the end of the race. I th in k th e traffic affects every body . Some of those guys ou t there we lapped fou r or five times, a nd th a t' s kind of silly. At th e rider' 5 meeti ng, th ey sa id that if it looked like if a guy was goi ng to get lapped more tha n twice, th ey'd get him off the race track. I thoug ht that was a good idea, bu t I don't think th at happened. It's a shame, but fortunately it was a good, clean race. I don't' think I saw anybody go down. That's irnpressive for such a tight an d small race track more wason the move on the the fear. "A ctua lly, I did n' t know (he w as opening up a lead )," Kip p ad mitted . " Ha d I know n that, I would ha v e pushed a little bit harder to try an d open that u p . I tho ug ht that, regardless of w ha t I did, those guys were rig ht the re w it h me . I didn't back off, but I just wasn' t being overaggressive. Maybe if I had known that, I would have changed the plan a little bit." DuHamel led the rest of the way, and Chandler eventually moved a round Kipp for second. Though it was close, the race lacked any real suspense - with la pped traffic providing the only variable. A backrnarker here and a backma rker there, and a lead cou ld be lost. In this case.ti t wa sn 't. DuHamel wa s decisive in traffic, and whenever Chan. d ler got close, he'd ge t balked - usu ally in rum one. Believe it or not, so me riders were lapped four times. 'That's abo ut the wo rst place to catch th em goi ng in to the re," Chandler said . "Yo u lose 8 mph and the o ther guys are go ne throu gh the sweeper and just say, 'See ya later.' I know it happened to me at least three of four tim es." Still, he w as seco nd - a nd further - it's great." Kipp couldn't quite keep pace at the end, though he finished less than a second behind Chandler. "It feels good," Kipp said. "I'm definitely grateful to be on the podium, especially with these two guys. But it's getting old, not winni ng . We're try ing really hard . For the Yamaha to win, everything just has to go right. The bike felt really good loday and my crew set me up wi th a really good mac hine. I had a little trouble wi th zero to just slightly on the throttle - it was creating a harsh kick there in two of the slower comers. Other than that, 1 d id n't rea lly have any troubles. I felt that these two guys were probably tryi ng to conserve tires ea rly on, but I felt that my tire was goi ng to tak e m aybe one hit a nd th en level off . That' s exactly w hat it did, so I wasn 't afraid to run out front. It took me a cou- pl e of laps to get settled ' in, but I felt really good. It felt reall y good to be ou t front . It was kind of a mental race . It seemed really long, but actually it went by quick. There we re definitely some moments when you 'd lose half a second in one particular corner, but I felt tha t these guys were getting hit just as ha rd as I was." Thanks mainly to his effort in traffic, DuHamel cleared out to a 2.312-second win. His only anxious moment came on the last la p, when a backmarker blew an engine, sending smoke to the sky - and worry to those still racing. "It was working really good ," DuHamel joked . "We struggled th is weekend. Let me think... Maybe when I destroyed tha t bike, it ki nd of put us back. It was great. The team really too k it well and no one was cryi ng o r anything. They we re jus t like, 'Okay, we'll b u ild yo u a ne w o ne.' Up u n til this mo rning, we were s till testing s prings an d stu ff. I've go t to give a lot of cred it to th e team. We di aled it in and it was very good, obvio us ly, for the race. Th ose guys worked really har d and that motivates me . I know they' re worki ng un til midnigh t, and I've got 10 go ou t and give it my best. "You've got to kee p in mind tha t Doug (Cha nd ler) d idn' t have to wi n this weekend." DuHamel added. UI'm sure he wanted 10 , and if he would have been right up there, he would have given it a shot and went for it, I'm sure. He was fast all weekend - he pulled a Miguel and was fast all weekend . In the race, I knew that if Mat wasn't close to me, then Doug would just be concerned with Mat. Since he didn't need to win, maybe he held back a bit, and that's just logical." Once he realized he was figh ting a losing battle, Mladin backed down and eventually crossed the line some 11 seconds behind Kipp. He'd had his troubles with traffic in the race, surp rising ly even when lapping his own teammates, Ro thm an Jr. and Dave Kieffer. "Today I had an eighth-place bike," Mladin said, "and I' m not ju st sayin g that. Everyo ne came he re and tested, and Dunlop made a tire for th is place. We did n ' t tes t, and Mi ch elin didn't Miguel DuHamel celebrates his third AMA Superblke National win in a row with a stand-up wheelie. know what we'd need. They d id a 'hell of a lot to get me where I was. We've only tested once at Putnam Park; if you don't test, what hope do you have? Then you've got teammates who you' re lapping, and they're trying to race with you and hold you up. That's really just all I had ." C revier came home fifth, trying to build his confidence back up afte r crashing his 600cc Supersport bike earlier in the day. "I got a good start, a good launch," Crevier said. "It's just that after the 600 fiasco, I was hesit ant to brake hard in turn three. I go t stuck behind Yates and Picotte, a nd I co u ld ca r ry a lot mo re speed throug h the bow l turn than they cou ld . It just took too long to pass them . I started to catch Mladin a little bit, but he was ge lting his pit signa ls. It was a good ride, and I just wa nt to thank the Smokin' [oe's team." Th e two Yosh Suzuki's were ne xt, with Picotte topping Yates. "The left side got pretty pumped up because I had to use it more to make up for the right shoulder," Yates said. "I never saw the halfway flag, and I didn't think we were halfway. I don't think we had the bike dialed in as good as it should have been. I just had to ride it too hard. The tires got to sliding around pretty good, and I thought I had a vibration one time. But I didn't notice it afte r that." After a lonely Wilson came an equa lly lonely Stevens, the Va nce &: Hi nes Ducati suffering from a se tup problem from the warmup lap onward. "We missed th e se tup by a cou ntry m ile;" cre w chief Jim Leona rd said. "I saw it on the wa rm up lap and was hoping for a red flag. We were tryi ng new stuff a ll week - we just co uldn' t get it figured o ut, and w e went the wrong wa y. Powerwise, it ran the best it has, so that's the positive."

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