Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

workers. In this instance, they all work for us. We want to be clear that we are taking the blame on this one and we apologize to the guys." When the dust had settled, there was no doubt that Gobert had done the most to bolster his championship aspirations - his two victories moving him forward in the title chase to third place, 20 points behind Mladin. Bostrom had also helped his cause, moving to within 16 points of Mladin, who had only managed a sixth place on Saturday. The rest of the field had an up-anddown weekend, with race two mostly a disaster for the top factory men. Yamaha's Jamie Hacking had impressed on Sa turday, finishing third on the brand-spanking-new R7, but his Sunday was dismal, as the bike suffered au engine failure on the eigllth lap. His teammate Oliver had also given the bike a sparkling debut on Saturday with a fourth-place finish, but his weekend was ruined with hi crash on Sunday. American Honcj.a's Miguel DuHamel put his RC45 into fiftll on Saturday, but his season ended just a day later when he crashed his CBR600 in the 600cc (Above) Anthony Gobert (95) and Ben Bostrom (1) battled in race one, with G0bi!rt barely beating his teammate. (Right) Steve Rapp (82) leads eventual 1hird-place man Jamie Hacking (92) on the new Yamaha R7. Mlgu~1 DuHamel (17) follows, with Rich Oliver (97) and Jason Pridmore (43) in tow. tng to do with the original incident {nvolving Henning and Fletcher. Unfnrtunately, it took another incident for the red flag to finally fly. This time, on the 13th lap, Yamaha's Rich Oliver crashed in the esses, slamming into a wall. As the Californian lay motionless on the outside of the race track, the red flag was finally thrown and the race was stopped. Oliver regained consciousness before being transported to hospital with a broken left arm and a possible fracture of the right elbow. Rightfully so, Mladin was livid when he came into the pits, though he managed to calm himself enough to finish third when the race was finally restarted. Afterward, he was cautious with wilat he had to say, considering his trials and tribula tions with the AMA in recent weeks, but he had faced wha t he thought was the worst moment of his racing career - certain disaster and near death. "If I didn't go to the grass, all five guys in front of me would have been on the ground, including me," Mladin said. "I had nowhere to go - that's why I pitched it off to the right. To save these guys, I went off the race track - fully expecting them to stop the thing. The ambulance was in our race line - right on it. It's unbelievable. Honest to God, it was the first time in racing that I actually thought it was time to leave this earth. I thought I was dead. I thought 1 was going straight into 'em. '1 just missed him up the right-hand side." > To his credit, race promoter Dan Murphy took full responsibility for the i\ncident - whether that responsibility was rightfully his or not. He vehemently apologized to all involved, and made a statement in the press room immediately following the event - after publicly pologizing on the podium. "l apologize to three people over this ambulance iru:ident," Murphy said. !'First to Mat Mladin, because pU>ttimg his life in danger there was clearly wrong; Team Suzuki, for all their hard work; and also every other rider on the race track, because we put them in a dangerous situation. This is an explanation. What happens procedurally if a rider goes down, the corner worker then radios race control and makes a decision if they should throw a yellow flag or a red flag and whether they should call an ambulance or not. The corner worker makes the call to say we need an ambulance, and also makes the call on the flag. The place where that ambulance was should never be a yellow. They are coming over the top of a crest with these guys going one of their top speeds and that ambulance being on the track - it should have been red-flagged. An ambulance should never roll from that particular position. Number two is that the ambulance sho.uld have had the common sense to let the entire pack go by before coming on the track. He obviously jumps out, basically right in the middle of the race. Clearly, mistake number three was keeping the ambulance there. The corner worker clearly should have red-flagged that. "In the case of what we should have done differently, clearly we have to look at our comer-worker situation, look at the corner-worker training, and say we have to err more on the side of caution. We've got to get these corner workers to rethink, and those situations should almost automatically be red-flagged. We tried to take too much risk to keep the race running, is my general opinion. We take blame for that. At the end of the day, comer workers are hired by promoters and the ambulance drivers are hired by the promoters. So in the category of who should take the blame for this, , it should not be the AMA - unless they are in the situation .0£ tr~ining the corner.>· Supersport final and suffered a broken left leg (the same leg he broke in his season-ending crash at Loudon last year). DuHamel was flown to Dr. Arthur Ting's office in San Francisco, California, on Sunday night and is expected to undergo surgery in the next 48 hours. Fortunately, although the leg is the same one tllat was injured last year, the break is higher on ilie bone and isn't as severe as last year's compound fracture. Mladin was a dismal - for him - sixth on Saturday, but he fought back to tru;.d on Sunday, doing far less damage to his championship hopes than how things appeared prior to Sunday's red flag. Yoshimura Suzuki's Jason Pridmore ended up seventh-on the first day, but his second day was .ruined when his bike failed him late in the race. Eighth in race one went to American Honda's Eric Bostrom, with {he Californian improving to sixth on the secohd day as· he con- '" '" '" 7

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