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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128093
any reason why there's not going to be
three or four guys together the whole
and he was riding the Lucky Strike
GSX-R750 at Daytona as a one-off.
They'd tested it once during the
Daytona winter tire tests and it wasn't
as good as the Kawasakis he'd ridden
to his first three 200 wins. What it did
have was top speed, which DuHamel
found out early on.
"I couldn't get away and I couldn't
even draft to pass him at the start-finish line," DuHamel remembers.
"For me it was simple," DuHamel
says, "if I had Scott in front of me,
there's no way I could have passed
him. I figured if I just take the lead and
get a good exit speed out of the chicane, which I did, and then try to do
something unexpected to where it
might make him slow down and think
for a split second longer than he would
usually instead of just trying to follow
me. That was my only hope - and that
worked out.
"I went down in the banking early
and then I went back up. Going down
the banking early, everybody can do
that, but to go back up, I don't recommend it. When I went to turn the bike
to avoid, of course, hitting the wall, the
bike came around on me in the banking and coming out of four. It was a
very testing moment. I figured I didn't
do all of this racing to back off. I Just
kept it pinned and I might have
cracked the throttle one-thousandth or
a millisecond and Scott maybe two
milliseconds and that's what I needed.
Because if I hadn't done that for sure
Scott would have just come by and
redrafted and it would have been a
very crushing defeat to race so hard
for the 200 miles and lose it by half a
wheel."
"That was Just my fault," Russell
says. "I wasn't in shape that year and
the suspension didn't work that good
and by end of race I was kind of tired,
mentally. I thought I had him covered
so I sat back waited, waited. On the
last lap he made a move and I was
late getting in draft and that's how he
pulled that out."
DuHamel won by .010 of a second,
which meant Russell was involved in
the closest win and one of the most
lop-sided, his famous 1995 victory
over Ducati's Carl Fogarty.
race."
In 1996, Miguel DuHamel (1) beat
Scott Russell (4) to the finish line In
what was the closest Daytona 200
ever. Margin of victory: .010 of a
second after 200 miles of racing.
than what they were in practice, with a
couple of double drafts and that sort of
stuff they pull back to your back
wheel. In my case, I wasn't going to
get away from them witl)out doing
something stupid."
Though the sheer numbers are
down, the quality of the field has risen.
This year there will be 16 factory bikes
on the starting line, all with a chance
of running near the front.
"You look through the years, and
not that many years ago, there's only
maybe a few factory teams with one
or two riders on it," DuHamel said.
"Now you've got teams with three riders on them and factory sponsored
and six teams. You've got