Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round 11: Brainerd International Raceway AMA/MBNA SUPERBIKE SERIES Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin did exactly what he needed to do at Bra ine rd. Though he couldn 't match Bostrom, he beat everybody else and he goes into the fina l round of the s e rie s with an eight-point lead over Bostrom. Ben, I th ink I co ul d've made a ra ce of it ," Ml a d in conti n ued. " Be ca use we w ere p re tty s trong in practice and stuff an d I sor t of thought I had a b ike. If I co u ld ' ve ju st b een behind h im o n t he s traigh t and we co u ld 've made someth ing hap p en o n the infie ld m aybe. I jus t didn 't get this chanc e. "The on ly time I reall y had a co u pl e of moment s was p as sin g Eric a nd Larry . They wer e in s econd a n d th ird a t th e ti me, I thin k , a nd I h a d to ge t pas t, . because if I didn't, I d idn't n eed to be fi n is hi ng fourth, b eca u s e the cha m pio nshi p w o u ld be scratch going to C olo rado. At lea st w e' ve still got a little b it of a break th ere. 50 I had to d o a couple of sill y m oves to get past them . When I w ent p ast Larry l went reall y wide and so r t o f felt I was pushing .a ll the w a y th rough fou r and so rt of had to protect again co m ing into five beca u se I knew he'd be co m ing back u p because I ran so w ide. But we got p ast, an d th at's w hat we ha d to d o. The b ike ran grea t today . I ca n't co m p lai n abo u t tha t. It' s ju s t that w e knew what w e were go ing to be u p against." Mladin ca u g h t a bit of luck by Gobert's fro nt-en d problem . "I was pretty su rpri sed, pretty frustr ated really," Gobert sai d . " I was pushing the fron t ea rly on. Throu g h one a nd Bostrom's late fl er WOTld Superbike race at Laguna Seca) came, ,1Od , like the second half of the season, I wish we had a few more races because I' m getting quicker aod qu icker as the season goes and my B Vance and Hin es' Go be r t, and Fast By Ferracci's Matt Wait wa s a surprising fourth, his firs t front-row sta rt of the year. But it en Bostrom spent most of the final qualifyin g session loitering. Th e Vance & Hines Du cati rid er wa sn't doin g much before he started moving up to han g out with the lead ers. With a few minut es to go he got serious. And when he crossed the line with about 30 seconds to go in the 45-miout e session, it was clear hovv se rious he was. He'd earned his third pole position of the year with a stunning new lap time that shattered the old lap record by ove r a second, knocking forme r record holder Mat Mladin back to second. The best was a lap of 1:36.070 /112.418 mph a round the thre e-mil e, l a-tum Brainerd Internat ional Racew ay. Mladin ' s old record was 1:37.263. "I knew all these guys we re great riders and just from looking at how fast they go in all the practice, I knew Mat (Mlad inl almos t put it in the 36s this morni ng, so I was like, 'Oh boy, you' re going to have to do a low 36 if you want pole: " Bostrom said. The 25-vear-old Californ ian wai ted and waited , then wen t for the hot iap. "I wa nted to do it the lap before, but I got stu ck on someone," he added . "I waited a little bit and then I tried to go fast the last lap and I only had to pass one guy , it just worked ou t really good, it was a pretty clean lap. There was a lot of traffic, so everybody has to dea l with it. I got a very clean lap in and my bike just T perfectly. Itmade it pretty easy." an After his 10th-place finish at Mid-Ohio, the result of a bad oil seal. Bostrom was glad to take the one extra poin t that comes with po le po sition, es pecially since Mlad in was seco nd fastest. "I figure if I d on ' t w in the next two races... Ma t's been ridi ng grea t all seas on, and he's go ing to be pretty hard to beat for the final; ' Bostrom continued. "Right now the 'Go Shows' (Anthony Gobert) is only two points back on me, so we still got .a threeway scra p even thou gh Mat's go t a decent g.:l p. If on e of us wins s both and Mat takes a th ird , one of us could win the title, so it's not over yet fOT SUTe. It'll be good right up to the end." What Bostrom sees as a plus is that the team is on a roll after hittin g its stride in the second half of the year. "The first half of the seaso n I kind of learn ed the Ducati a bit and was just trying to get my own confidence and figu re out if I 14 cou ld actually wi n or no t," Bostrom sai d . "A nd that wi n (in th e learn ing curve's go ing goo d chasing th ese gu ys right now, so two it was all right , but w hen we so rt of hit th e turns t h at h ad a b ig o il slick (from a n earlier Pr o Th u nder engine),l seemed to be pushing th e f ro n t a little bit. I was a little bit worried about tucking the fro nt a nd I sort of lost th e tow a little bit from Ben s traigh t away. A nd th en 1 seemed to just get sort of draggled by the o ther guys, and I was reall y just struggling with the fro n t ea rly o n . Once the fuel got down I started fee ling more comforta ble wi th the fro nt. Th en I started sort of dropping the ti mes, p ut my head d o w n and s ta rted rea lly try- • ing." Gobert said he could see Pegram and Bos tro m a head of h im and h ad nea rly given up on th e spo t un t il H a c king made a challenge on la p 11. "We were rid in g p retty close," Gobert sa id . "I go t u p th e inside of him co ming o n to the straigh t a nd he di dn't reall y let me in . We w ere s ide by side and he ju st kept tip p ing in o n m e. So I had no o p tion but just to run u s both o ut a little bi t so then he sort of stuffed m e back in two and nea rly took m e o ut. So it was o n af ter th at. I sort of s tuffed him reall y b ad and he tri ed it back and we d id a bunch of times, even on the cool down lap he stuffed me again, so I stuffed hi m before th e pits. 50 that was fun ny, that's w hat reall y got me motivated ." The figh t fo r fourth was a contrast in sty les. According t o Eric Bost ro m, Pegra m was " b lazingly fas t" in tu rns o ne and two, and Pegram sa id th at Eric w as fast er in th e infiel d. " It w ork ed o u t a l mos t exa ct ly wro ng," Bostrom said. " Both of us had o u r fast s p o ts a n d it kind of h eld u s back." Pegra m al so sa id he k new he co ul d p a s s E r ic Bo strom , b u t co u ld n 't ge t away. " W e had r e al e ven l a p ti mes, " Pegra m sa id . "Mat's had a pretty good run this yeaTwith luck, luck-wise, so hopefull y, you know , he might crash:' Gobert said, at which point Mladin threw his head back in laughter. Cobert quick ly reversed himself by saying that he didn 't "wish, you know , fOT Mat to crash, bu t that's SOTt of what we need really to make it it's been great, After that win I was planning to win Mid-Ohio and we had a bit of an oil problem, and I pretty much have to . easier for us, because 15 poi nts is hard to make u p in two races." winnow ." Then came Wait in his first race since his fall at Elkhart Lake Mladin was the lone Suzu ki on the front row . Third was a month and a half earlier, The FBF Ducati rider sa id his back was Mladin who was the man to beat for the pole, and he nearly had it. Facetiou sly, he said he had the best bike on the track, the fastest , the bes t handlin g, the bes t accelerating. But eveTyone knew it was a joke: You only had to look at the top speed num bers. "O n a mo re se rious not e, th e Du catis a re runn ing good , there's no d oubt about it," Mlad in conceded after his 1:36.410 lap time. "You would n't be sitting besid e three of them on the OW front T if they weren' t running goo d . I think the bigg est adva ntage they have here is that they get to speed quickly and through turn on e w here yo u go down a gea r, you're so rt of pullin g out of there in fifth. Obv iously, they have good torqu e, good power, so they seem to pu ll good off the high-speed COTners. They seem to keep it up there pretty good . We're doing a good job, we're hap py with how it went. It wou ld 've been nice to get that point off Ben. Ben's just doing an aweso me job. He's riding the wheels off that thing. He's really coming good at the end of the vear when he needs to. "The I';p time I done today was pT etty much the quickest I could d o. It was just, I was pushing my own air fOTboth the laps that I had a go. 1 didn't see anybody ou t there. There were a couple of laps where I would've liked to try to catch up with somebody, but we done a good lap time. And even in the dr aft of somebody or pu lling someone back, a six flat was going to be hard to be beat. I d idn't think it was going to take a six flat. I knew maybe a 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, like \V~ done, UTa 6.5, that's a damn good lap time . You can' t take not hin g aw ay fro m Ben. He's on it," Mlad in conclud ed . Gobert was third, and thinking he should have been first. "I though t I had a little bit more in me," he said, his time just .0118 of a second behi nd Mladin ' s. Having missed this race due to his three- race suspe ns ion last \...-as s till stiff, and there was some question about w het her he would even ride. "It was doubtful if I was even going to race this weekend because at Mid -Ohio there wa s no wa y, I could n' t ev en tuck in," he said after turning a 1:36.587, the last rider in the 36s. "I sat on the bike and my back hurt so bad. I'd say I'm about 70 percent back. When Y OUTad renaline's pumping it all goes away." His job was mad e less stressful by the fact that Eraldo FeTracci had buill him a very capable machine. "Ferracci put together a good setup and, like I told Ferracci, I just had to sit on the bike becau se the bike was doin g such a grea t job for me," Wait said . "It just mad e it eas ier for me." As fOT the 21-lap race, Wait said he just wanted to, "be there till the end and see what turns up . It's a long race. You don 't really have such strategy, you just try to be up front the wh ole time and be there at the end . That's all that matters." Sta r ting off th e second ro w was last year's w inner Er ic Bostrom. The America n Hond a rider had stunned a few people by winning Brainerd last yea r, but has n' t be on form since en crashing in practice at Daytona - the first race of the yeaT. Fifth was his best qualifyi ng effort of the year, but he knew there was more in it after clocking a 1:37.069. "We have the thing working pretty good, we're just missing on the last a mo unt of e n try speed o r we 'd be right th ere," Bostrom said . "We' re not SUTeexactly where the problem is. On Frida y we were hurting pretty bad . Today we made a change to the front and gaioed basically a second ." Also turn ing in his beSt qua lifying performa nce of the year was Yoshi mura Su zuki 's Steve Crevie r, tho ug h he had a mecha nica l failure a t the very end of the sessio n when he may have im proved his time ev en mor e. The T of the second row was Yamaha's [amie Hacking and est Yoshimura Suzuk i's Steve Rapp. yeaT,Cobert had to learn the track, which he likened to some of The line between the haves and have-ne ts co uld no t hav e the European tracks he raced on. He also said it was easier to been any more clear. Yamaha' s Rich Oliver was the last of the 16 ' factory ride rs, his time more than three seconds faster than 17th fastest James Rand olph, though most of the re t of the 35-rider s field was on 750ccSu persport equi pment. learn than Mid-Ohio, where he strugg led to a ninth-place finish. Tha t was a severe blo w to his title hopes, an d he said that only misfortu ne by Mladin could save him now.

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