Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

"I should have run what my instincts said to run," Chandler said. "We tried to be conservative. Tomorrow I'll go with what I ran yesterday and make a few other changes. It was a bit loose in the rear. I w':l.sn't getting in there as good a I had earlier in the week. It'd come around on me when I'd bend it off in finished 10th on Saturday before improving to eighth on Sunday. Although DuHamel was disappointed not to be going to Hawaii, he did go somewhere - namely up, as in up the championsh.ip point charts. All the way up to second. The French Canadian is now on!y a single pain t behind Chandler in the fight for the AMA/MBNA Superbike ational Championship. As the series hits the halfway mark of its 14 rounds, Chandler has 203 points to DuHamel's 202, and Mladin is only six points beh.ind with 196. Then comes Bostrom with 187, followed by Gobert's 184. there." RACE ONE Despite heavy rain.' for most of the morning, Saturday's Superbike National got started under cloudy skies but on a completely dry race track. Oliver had secured pole position by virtue of his quick time on Friday, but that was totally wasted when he botched the start. Later, Oliver said the Yamaha had been diagnosed with a problem that he wouldn't disclose - but his teammate Jamie Hacking also suffered a start-line problem and the· pair circulated together for the first few laps, out of the lead pack.. That lead pack was instead led by DuHamel, with Chandler second, Mladin third, Stevens fourth and Gobert fifth. By the lime they crossed the fini hline stripe for the first lime, Gobert had moved around his teammate to take over fourUl. Chandler took over at the front on the second lap, drafting his way by the factory Honda RC45 on the back straight to take the lead. DuHamel, Mladin, Gobert, Bostrom, Stevens, Yates, Oliver, Hacking and Kip,p followed at the completion of the second lap. It was this time around tha t Picotte entered the pits for the first of several stops on the ill-running Harley-Davidson. Chandler's run at the front lasted until lap 11. It was then that the charging Bostrom shot into the lead entering turn one. The young Californian had passed both Gobert and h.is teammate DuHamel heading into the ch.icane, and seemed to be intent on ending his recent run of fourth-place finishes. Gobert couldn't bear to watch his former roommate run off in the distance, so he quickly moved around DuHamel and Chandler to take over second. On the 13th lap, both DuHamel and Oliver went past Chandler, dropping the one-time leader all the way back to fifth. For Oliver, it had been an impressive run after the start-line h.iccup, and he finished a solid fourth - by far his best-ever superbike finish. "It bogged off the start and almost stalled," Oliver explained later. "Then I started passing a guy a lap. Doug (Chandler) was into two when I was still in one, but then all of us were in seven together and I was up to fifth. I was hoping for a podium, but we'll come back stronger tomorrow. I got a split from Doug in traffic and I was content in fourth because I knew I couldn't run those other three down. It was late in the race and 1'd used the tires catching up - I'm trying to be wiser now. A better start would have saved energy and some hairball maneuvers. It was a great day for the team. We got up with the leaders after such a bad start, s'o it wasn't so bad." By this point, Chandler's hopes of victory were gone, dashed by what he called a bad tire choice. o Aloin for a struggle was the man with whom Chandler went into the race tied for the championship points lead Mladin. His problems, though, had nothing to do with tire choice. "Anywhere we come to where there's a straight and we're doing 170 mph, I know we're going to struggle," Mladin said. "That's where everybody passed me - they didn't pass me anywhere else. "It's nothing that can be fixed for tomorrow, and you can imagine that I'm really loo)

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