Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD RACE AMAIIIBNA SUPERBIKE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP r:J::) 0\ ~ 00 ...... ,..c; u I-< ro "'::::' ,£:i 8 "We ran around together and then I pulled away .from him," Russell explained. "I think he may have been laying back or got in some traffic - I'm not sure. I thought I had the legs on him there for a while; then I hit some traffic, hit a co~ple of false neutrals - I made quite a few mistakes during that race that I haven't made in the past. He was able to get back up and I had two laps to go before I pitted, and he came flying by me on the banking - down the back straig4t - and went awfully deep off into the chicane. I think he turned his brain off for a minute on accident and just got in there too hard, tried to tip it in, and he just wasn't going to make it. He tucked the front, locked the front end . up. All I could do was smile from that point on. I could tell he wasn't going to be hurt, so I knew he was all right. Then I had a good little gap on the rest of the crowd and just tried to maintain and stretch it out a little bit. I just wanted to be smooth and take care of my tires. It was a long day out there by myself like that." To further dash any remaining hopes of someone catching up, Russell's crew got him in and out of the pits in under seven seconds. Barring a mechanical problem, no one was going to match the Screarnin' Chief on this day - not on this race track. If Russell's pit stop was the final nail in everyone else's coffin, then Picotte's was the complete opposite. It was horrible and difficult to watch. And for all practical purposes, it was his race-killer. He ended up going from second to eighth - ana it would get much worse. "We've had the same (wheel-changing) equipment that we had today since '95," Harley-Davidson team manager Steve Scheibe said. "We didn't have any problems with (Thomas) Wilson's first stop. It was just the dutch dragging that got it started on the first one for Pascal. Things eroded from there. During the confusion from the first stop, a small wheel spacer fell off. That reciprocated the failure of one of the drive mechanism in the wheel hub. Pascal didn't know it, but when we took it apart, I could see that it was failed. It wasn't correct to continue. We put all our effort into making the bike more reliable and we've accomplished that. We've never focused on pitting .- it's only one race a year. For us to be spending much time on that, it's not good use of our resources. We've always had good performances - like 12 seconds. If we would have come through with that today, we . would have had a good result." Picotte would end.up fighting his way back to sixth before going through the disappointment all over again on pit lane. "The first pit stop [ wasn't that bad," Picotte saip. "I lost almost a full minute on the first pit stop, but I didn't give up. I just started chasing one after the other. I was running them down one after another ana it was working. I had just gone by Gobert, Aaron (Yates), Kipp and Hacking was right in front of me. We were going to come in, change just the rear tire and go out and finish on the box for sure." Two riders somewhat relieved to see the demise of the Harley were Chandler and flacking. Early in the race, while the three battled,.Chandler was given the oil flag and he thought his day might be over. "Two laps before I was coming in for the first stop, they were giving me an oil flag:' Chandler explained later. "I was going onto the banking and they were pointing it at me. I got off line, but [ JU11f12: Daytona International Speedway (Above) Mat Mladin rode conservatively to finish fourth, claiming a piece of the championship points lead with Anthony Gobert. (Below) Ben Bostrom pits for fuel and tires. The young Californian stayed out of trouble and finished fifth in the Daytona 200 by Arai. didn't feel anything. I lost some time dealing with that." Both Chandler and Hacking were left with lasting impressions of the Harley's' performance. "I tell you what - that Harley had some legs," Hacking said. "The thing started smoking there a little bit before halfway and I thought, 'Yeah, okay.' But the thing just never dropped off. I was like, 'Jeez, when's this thing gonna blow up?'" "That thing did have really good acceleration off the corners," Chandler concurred. "The top speed wasn't bad, but the thing would really accelerate through the gears up on the banking. It was real surprising to see that thing. Then it started oiling and I kinda let it go a little bit, not knowing what was going to happen. The thing just kept going." After the first of the two scheduled pit stops, things settled down, with Russell holding some 20 seconds on Chandler. The Muzzy Kawasaki rider, meanwhile, was also now comfortably ahead of Hacking, who now had to deal with Bostrom. The Californian, though, was a bit gun-shy by this point, and was already beginning 'to settle for fourth - and that became fifth late in the race when Mladin started a charge. "I was way conservative," Bostrom said. '1 was just so worried about crashing. When [ was with Hacking, I was just watching him flick the thing in and point it. It was like, 'God, I used to do that.' The Honda worked so good. My pit stops were unbelievable - I"ve got such a good team behind me and I feel like I let them down a little. Hopefully, we'll just get better results throughout the season. When Mladin got me, it was like, 'There's no way I'm giving up fourth. I've got motor, c'mon.' I stuck.it in the chicane behind him and I was like, 'I'm really making some time on him.' And I sure was - I ran it right off into tlle grass. I lost five or six seconds and thought I'd better just settle for fifth." Behind Mladin and Bostrom came a battle between Oliver and Yates. Just when it looked like Oliver was getting the upper hand late in the race, he crashed - for the third time on the weekend. That left Yates to cruise to sixth all alone, broken jaw and all. He did so on the carbureted GSXR750 and not the fuel-injected bike he rode at Phoenix. Yates said that the team hadn't run the injected bike for 200 miles and were more comfortable wi th the old bike's reliabili ty. • was pretty pleased," Yates said. "I wasn't really going any faster, but I saw the chance to go for sixth and I went for it. " By this time, Russell was in full cruise mode and trying to stay focused on the job at hand. "After you see what happens .to a guy so easily like that (DuHamel's crash) - and the tires are giving you indications that you could fall down in any corner as it is - it gets hard," said Russell. "I kinda backed it down a little bit, but it seemed to be harder to ride like that. Then the second tire I got on - I went real slow that time. r was out there running 54s, 55s and r even saw a 56 on there. I thought, 'I'm out of my rhythm here.' We got through that okay and put the last tire on. We had 18 seconds on Doug (Chandler) when we went in and when I came back out, I had only 14. I could see Doug coming out of turn one through the kink there as I ran down the infield straight - I just tried to keep him right there. He'd put a little bit on me, and I'd put it back on him. It was kind of back and forth like that until the last few laps and I decided I could breathe a little bit easy at the end. We just rolled around and made sure we finished the race. It was just a long day at the office today." Though Chandler was able to cut into Russell's lead in the closing stages of the race, he knew that second was all that could do - for a second straight year in the Daytona 200. It left him wanting more. '1t's something I'd like to do (win the 2(0)," Chandler said. 'Tve still got a few years to maybe come back and get one under my belt. I'm happy with second. There's no reason why I shouldn't be. The team, the bike, everything went really good. I had to do a few little things):!) get it going again, but they fixed it and I picked up the times. We tried to make a push at the end, but we just ran out of laps. I wanted to go witll them, but I was just having some trouble on my own. We seemed to get it fixed after the first stop, but I just gave up too much time at the start of the race." Considering where he was a year ago in the championship points chase following his diabolical Daytona, Mladin was thrilled with fourth place after a day of plugging away. ''l'm really happy," Mladin said. "We're leading the championship that's all that matters. It was slow, but smooth. That's all we had to do. I kn w we weren't going to win today - unless something drastic happened at the front. I thought we could finish on the podium, but I ran off the track and lost 12 seconds one lap. It was tlle sixth lap or something. I ran off in the chicane and did a 2:04, 2:05 or something. [ just screwed up. 1 just can't get any drive onto the banking. It's bad. We didn't have that problem in Phoenix, so maybe it's just a problem here. But if we've got that problem, we're going to have it someplace else for sure. The first few laps it was evident. On a new tire, I should at least be able to keep up for a little while. I couldn't even keep up. I think I only got the back wheel out of line about four times the whole race. I knew with some 53s and 54s we'd be in the top four or five. Everyone always predicts these fast race times, but every year Russell's running 52s and 53s and he wins the race. Everyone predicts SIs and that kind of bullshit. The first cou-

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