Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

through the east banking, Ben had a sudden deflation of his rear tire, the resulting spill and slide landing him in the hospital with severe hand injuries. "It made me think the whole time out there, any lap you could have unforeseen problems," Bostrom says. "You have no control over it. And that's kind of scary." Bostrom thinks about it every lap he goes around the Speedway. It wasn't the banking that hurt Eric, though. When the traveling circus returned for the 200 in March of 1999, Bostrom was the nominal favorite on the American Honda team. Miguel DuHamel was still recovering from an operation to repair the damage from his Loudon crash in 1998. The French Canadian veteran could barely walk and probably shouldn't have raced. Bostrom was the healthy one, for a while. Rolling through the International Horseshoe during an early practice session, Bostrom suddenly found himself flying through the air. He knew the feeling: He'd highsided dirt bikes a hundred times, but he'd never done it on a road racer, which meant it was more sudden, more violent, and more damaging than anything he'd ever experienced. "I kind of asked for that," he admits "It was my mistake, being a little too greedy and maybe a little bit of a rookie mistake because the Daytona Qs [qualifying tires] are so much stiffer," Bostrom explains. "I'd run qualifiers a handful of times before that with the other Superbike races, and then 1 figured, the right side of the Daytona Q is supposed to be the same as the normal qualifier, so I just hammered on the thing and ever since then I've been super shy on the qualifiers. But I think also some of that had to do with the setup of my bike last year. It didn't want to accept a change like that because putting traction in the bike changes a lot of things." The Daytona crash kept him out of the 200 and he never seemed to recover, not during his year with Honda. It was baffling, not only to him, but also his team. "It's kind of confusing, especially for the outsider to look in and say, 'How can a guy go out and do so good right off the bat on a Superbike and then struggle on it as much as they did?' Honestly, it doesn't even make sense to me, except that you've got to take'your licks sometimes. I know in dirt track racing, 1 almost had the same thing. My firstever Expert dirt track race, I almost won the thing. It was at Syracuse. It was my first time ever being on a mile, everything, and I was just super-fast. But then for the rest of the year I struggled to make the main. It's something to do with, you put any new rider, any rider on a new bike and they kind of go out there and push the thing and they seem to do a really good job on it, but then, after a while, it's bizarre, but something happens. 1 don't know if it comes from over-thinking the situation, which was certainly my case in 1999." Coming into the factory fold meant the best bikes and the best technicians. For Bostrom it was the chance to work with the inestimable Merlyn Plumlee. In a career that's been spent between the AMA and World Superbike series, Plumlee has worked with some of the world's best riders and many more have wanted to work with him. Having Plumlee as a crew chief was an asset to Bostrom, though the process would prove too intense. "All bikes, you're never going to have a perfect bike," Bostrom says. "Although in '99 1 was looking for the perfect bike and that took away a little bit on some of my riding. 1 was in search of something that wasn't out there." Plumlee tried to verbalize all the problems and make Bostrom understand what was going on with By the time he figured it out, it was time to move on. American Honda had badly wanted both Bostroms in 1999. Ben's management at the time knew it, so they asked for too much, and Honda balked. Ben would take the number-one plate he'd earned at Honda in 1998 to Vance [,. Hines Ducati. When it became clear Eric wouldn't be back with Honda in 2000, he had a few options. One was to join Ben on the V[,.H Ducati team. The offer came before Ben was offered the World Superbike ride. It was tempting, but Kawasaki wanted him more. There would be considerable change at Kawasaki in 2000 and no one knew how it would turn out. At the end of 1999, Kawasaki had severed their ties with Rob Muzzy, who'd run the team for years, and had taken the program in-house. Mike Preston was brought over from the personal watercraft division to run the team. He had deep pockets and long arms, but also the unfortunate tendency to overreach early the bike. It was helpful for his learning process because he'd never had to do it. In 1998 he just rode the RC45 that was handed to him in his limited experience, and his frame of reference was the CBR600, which he first rode in 1997. "So '97, '98, 1 really didn't have much input except for a small amount," Bostrom explains. "And then for '99 1 had a lot of input and it turned out to be maybe too much for me. And even at like my best races that year, it didn't really show because 1 think I missed it on a few spots of the track - like Brainerd. We had a pretty decent ride, 1was very fast through most of the track, but turns one and two 1 was super slow because there was a little imbalance on the bike. And it took that for me to understand, hey, I could have maybe not won that race, because my brother was really fast, but I know I could have gotten second that day, rather than fourth. But it took a result like that to go 'Hey, I need to figure out how to get the bike to go around the whole track ...' a U a I e n e _ S • MARCH 14, 2001 37

• Cover