Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

was making tim e on Jamie. 1 kind of go t h osed in traffic. I w asn't tr ying to d o nothing . I'd been ha v in g tr ouble with th at seam. From the inf ield to the a p ron there a re th ree p atches, a n d th e fron t e nd is s us pect th rough th ere. 1 didn't th in k I was ca r ry ing any speed . 1 was looking at the next co mer. I hit the ripples and that was it. Before I ca ugh t the last tw o lappers, I th ou ght I'd be right wi th him." Chandler had closed to within seventenths of a secon d sta rt ing th e final lap, ha ving kn ocked tenths off of th e lead for se vera l laps before. Th e race hadn't been ea sy for Chandler. At the s ta rt, his Muzzy Kawas aki ZX-7R d eveloped a m isfire. Ch andler d iag nosed it as a probl em w ith th e spee d shifte r and he turned the electric s hifter o ff with the handlebar switch . Yates w on the ra ce and a fte rw ard thanked his lucky stars . "Those two guys th a t went ou t in fron t of u s, th e y su re made it easy," Yates sa id . "I w orked my way around, go t behind Ja m ie and s h o w e d h im a wheel. He picked up the pace and I w as like, 'All right, let's go : and we kind of s ta r ted closing in on th e top two guy s a nd I w as kind of cau gh t up in actually w a tc h in g their battl e up there. The y were back and forth a nd it was a pretty good rac e, Ben (Bostro m) goi ng out wi d e o u t th ere (in tu rn six) . I w as like, 'A ll right. No reason for me to watch th em two a nymo re, go t to pay a ttention to w ha t I'm doin g' . And then the next lap, co m ing arou nd a nd Ma t' s just kind of coasting through there. I' m like Wow, w ha t is thi s all abo u t?' So I chased Ja mi e (Ha cki ng) . He slo wed u p jus t a bit there fo r a co u p le laps, and I closed in real close and manag ed to g e t arou nd hi m and we n t on and s tayed comforta ble an d cou nted d own the laps. Actu a lly, I h ad to make m yself sto p looking a t the dam n pit boa rd th e r e for a w hi le, b ecause I kept looki ng at it and counting the laps a nd tha t' s how it went." Yates had o ne moment e a rly in the race w hen he might have joined the o the rs on the scra p h ea p, but he ma naged to save it. (Right) Yates' victory was his second career win in an AMA Superbike National. (Below right) Anthony Gobert closed the gap on Doug Chandler in the race for the superbike crown by fi ni shing third. " I g o t ou t there pretty wid e, and I guess it's kind of out th ere in the marbl es or som e th in g," he said . " I got a bit of a ch a tt e r from th e rear and it w a s like sideways and it flipped me up , and I did m y r egular o ld high-side save try th in g and g o t o n th e gas as good as 1 co u ld. 1 w ent o n and came a ro u n d a n d saw I had some time, so I was co mfo r ta ble . Th is p lace r e all y s ui ts m y sty le, I g uess; I enjo y ridi ng arou n d here and I've always d one w ell here. T his Yo shimu ra Suzuki is jus t an aweso me b i k e to b e he re o n t his track." H a v i ng m is s ed th r e e races, Ya tes isn' t in th e cha mpions hi p hunt, b u t th e weeke nd gave hi m so me perspective. "W ith Migu el go ing ou t, it opens it w ide open beca use he d o mi n ated th e last cou p le of races, a nd also An thony's been d oi ng reall y well a nd hi m bei n g u p h ere aga in a n d then M a t h av in g an other difficul ty th at k in d of drops him ba ck a bit," h e sa id. "T ha t's th e w a y it w ent. This weekend's been pretty different." " I put thi s Yamaha out th e r e and rode th e w heels off of it: ' Ha cking said . "It kind of felt lik e the Daytona 200, but Mladin takes the fifth I withou t a p it s to p . M y Yam ah a w as fla wl ess. All th e g u ys on th e team are great. We d id a gre a t job on se tting the bike up for th e w ee k en d for th e lo n g run. I'm not the fast est in pra ctice. I've would 've been real close, too, but he had a bit of a get-off, too. I jus t wa nt to se t po le. I'v e ne ve r been on po le in superbike. I was pretty eager to get out there, bu t my mind wasn 't fully in it. Miguel (Dul-iarnel) fell and (Thomas) Wilson and Brett Metzger (see "Briefly.."). I just couldn 't stop thinking about that. I think everyone had that. In the press room, Aaron even said, 'Yeah, I was backing off in one a bit: So I'm sure everyone had that on their mind . Otherwise, I'm betting that the three of us maybe t is a gros s understat em ent to sa y that quali fying was a mes s even pu t it in th e l l s, becau se everyo ne out there took some at Loudon. The first session was interru pted by rain and the chances. I'm satisfied with it:' Mladin's teammate Aaron Yates killed anv chances he had of improving above third when he crashed on-his first lap on his qualifying tire. ..It was going pretty good," Yates sai d . "On the second lap I went dowrn through the esses, d own the end of the Speedway, lost the front going through the right-hander and that pret ty second one was ra ined o ut comple tely . American Honda's Miguel DuHamel broke his leg (see "Briefly..."} on a wet track in the first attempt at the first session, abou t an eight-minute run . The entire one-hour sessio n was later Tun, the qua lifying ending at 7 p.m. on Friday evening. When it was finally done, Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mlad in was again on the pole, the Australian earning his fifth of the season with a new lap record of 1:1 2.209. Of all the riders, Mladin was the most critical of the safety conditions at the track, but it didn 't slow him do wrn much. "I should hav e done 115," said MIadin, w ho w on here last year on the Fast By Ferracci Ducati, "I got held up by Rich Oliver for about 500 yards and he was sliding all over the place. If there are good conditions, it wou ldn 't surprise me if people were doing 11s. It's going to take 11.7, 11.8 to get the pole, depending on co nd itions. " American Honda' Ben Bostrom was second , .071 of a second beh ind Mlad in, his best qualifying effo rt yet on the Honda RC45. " It went pretty good," Bostrom said. ':1 knew Mat (Mladin) and Aaron (Ya tes) wou ld be the guys to beat out this week, for sure. They just go so damn fast around this track. Both of them are really good riders. At the last couple of tracks I had a bit of a horsepower adva ntage, SO I expected to outqua lify them there, but here I knew it'd be tough. I put my head dow n pretty hard, did a 12.2. Mat put his head down : he also did a 12.2. His ended up bein g a few hundredths more than mine. Aa ro n I'm s ure much en ded my session . I we nt d own , just a little lo w-side , and took the handlebar off. There wasn't enough time to get it all fixed up. The bike was workin g really goo d and I felt that I could' ve gone just as fast if not faster than the other guys. I was doing like 13.1s ever since day one. The race setup is pretty good: ' . Yates sa id that, u nlike som e of the recent high-speed tracks such as Road Atlan ta and Road America, the 12-turn, 1.6-mile New Hampshire International Speed way suited the Suzuk is. "The bikes turn really good and you can flick them good ; you can stick them anywhere you want to and they'll stay there and that's what works around this place," he said. "That's why we went to the front. We put a lot of effort into getting the gearbox right for drivin g out of the tight turns and trying to get the 'p ower down and not spin it too much." Muzzy Kawasaki's Doug Chandl er was fourth fastest, his best time of 1:12.911 on a qualifying tire. He didn 't go faster in Saturday's free practice session. "I don 't think anyone can do 125 on a race tire," Chandler said. "I could run pretty consistent high to mid-13s on a race tire. It' d be nice to get a couple more tenths out of it. " just be en tr yin g to ge t the bikes di aled in a nd n ot blaze a ro u n d here in pra ct ice and set the w orld on fire, and then come to th e race a nd n ot do anyth ing a t all. I'm jus t now co ncen trat ing o n th e r~ce Yamaha 's Jamie Hacking started off the second row, having been knocked off the front row in the final minutes. "These last few ra ces in qualifying, I'm takin g my time, may be working on my setu p, cha nging it for a more precise feeling in the long run, in the race," Hacking said . "Qualifying as long as I'm on the first two rows, I'm happy. Right now I'm more concerned with wo rking on setu p and being the re in the race. This place is tough. You've got to get a good setup. I think we' ve got a good package for the race, something I can ride the whole 39 laps and not get off and be hammered. These guys are blistering off some paces, but 1 don' t think - not around here, man - I don' t think it's going to last. It's good to go out and get yourself pumped that you can go out there and do 125 in practice, but when you've got 40 guys coming dow-n your neck for 39 laps... I've got a different strategy going than somebody else, but I think mine'll work pretty good:' Tom Kipp turned in his best qualifying effort on the Fast By Ferracci, sixth fastest as he continues to make progress on feeling comfortable on the Ducati. "We've been changing stuff all weekend," Kipp said, "mainly just fine-tuning the rear shock and forks. We' ve been testing tires. Like today, we made it a priority in the morning practice to run race distan ce on wha t we thought was the race tire. I did a bunch of 14.0s and 14s. I'm going to have to go a little faster in the race on a dry track." Vance & Hines Ducati's Anthonv Gobert was an uncharacteristic ninth fastest, the victim of some bad setup choices, but mainly he was just spook ed after seeing how badly DuHamel and Wilson had been hurt . "Yesterday, after seeing two of my friends get badly hurt , I did n't want to get badly hurt." Gobert said. He was able to go faster in Saturday's free practice, but 'he was unable to improve his grid position after Saturday's qualifying session was canceled. "I learned wher e the track went a lot better," Gobert said. "We changed gea ring, we changed suspension . Those three things helped . I thought I'd go faster in qualifying; then they decided to call qualifying: ' A ~ ~ 13

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