Road Race
Round 3: Willow Springs International Raceway
AMAIMBNA SUPERBIKE NA TlONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
getting a little bit better and' a bit
stronger. This winter I worked really
hard getting it strong and it's paid off
in my riding. Eraldo (Ferracci) gave me
this cha nce on the bike. After that
thing Suzuki put me on last year, I had
no confidence in myself, and obviously
no one else did, either. But the bike
they put me on was a joke. I just carne
out this year and it took me a couple of
races to get my confidence."
Although Pegram finally won the big
one, he knew he had the better of his
rivals when it came to tires. Simply put,
the Michelins were better on this day
and only Pegram and his teammate
Matt Wait, eighth today, had them.
'The tire definitely got greasy, but it
was definitely better than what these
guys were running," Pegram said. "I
feel like I'm a comparable racer to these
guys and can beat them on any weekend. I feel like if we were on the front
row, we'd be 20 seconds ahead at the
end of the race - my tire was that good. I
could have run off with it. We had a better tire here this weekend - for sure. I
did wha t I had to do. I had the bike, I
had the tires. AID had to do was go out
and ride it and I feel really good about
doing that."
Bostrom and his Vance & Hines
Ducati held on to finish second, just 1.3
seconds behind Pegram and barely
ahead of Yamaha's Jamie Hacking,
who was also a factor for nearly the
entire race. Bostrom had done most of
the leading on this day, crossing the
stripe at the front on 14 of the 25 laps once his fast-starting teammate Anthony Gobert was forced out of the race
with a mechanical problem on the sixth
lap - but he just didn't have enough
grip to give Pegram much of a fight at
the end.
Hacking also faced a grip problem, a
dilemma that goes hand in hand with
Willow Springs when the temperatures
By Paul Carruthers
Photos by Henny Ray Abrams
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