Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Series Round 1 : Daytona International Speedway those guys. Miguel came out of the pits, and I didn't know if he was still racing for the lead or not, so I let him by. Then he [DuHamel] tucked the front, and I just rode the rest of the race.' Miguel DuHamel had proven to be the only person capable of running with Mladin during the race, and he was the only other rider other than the Australian to lead the fray. But on the 39th lap, DuHamel.crashed the RCSl in turn six while giving chase to a fast-disappearing Mladin, ending his day and landing him in 44th place and out of the points. He obviously wasn't pleased, and he'd left the facility by the time the race had concluded. The third Honda man, Nicky Hayden, fared better, though it could hardly be called a banner day for last year's runner-up in the 200. On just the second lap of the race, Hayden's RCSl developed an oil leak that knocked the Kentuckian out of the race, or so he thought. With the red flag coming out just two laps later, he was saved. He was able to make the restart on a back-up bike, and he continued to battle all day long. By the end of what was inarguably the longest race in recent memory, Hayden had finished 10th - salvaging some points and breathing a little bit of life back into his championship aspirations. "Something happened to the bike, I'm not sure, something in the motor,' Hayden explained. "I was two laps down and got back on the other bike, and it was a bike we hadn't turned a lap on all weekend. It wasn't even my back-up bike; something had already happened to my back-up bike, and they changed as much as they could and got it as close as they thought in what little time they had. Coming down the front straightaway, it didn't feel like it was pulling that good. I'd had a little problem early in the week, and I thought it may have been happening again. I went in the second horseshoe, and when I shut off the throttle, the thing got really tight, and I just backed it in, and I just about crashed, and I saved it. It's a huge disappointment. You train all winter, work so hard, testing and everything, and then two laps into the season have something happen like that. I watched that crash on instant replay and think maybe it could have happened for a reason, and I try to be positive. I got 10th-place points, so it's not a disaster. I'm not out of it yet or nothing. I'll just try to let it sink in a little bit, let it hurt, then go on and start at Sears Point - just try to get back up there. " The other factory men who obviously suffered dearly were the nonMladin portio'n of the Yoshimura Suzuki team - Yates and Hacking. Although both of them can be thankful for escaping serious injury, both left Daytona with zero points. Few could possibly argue that, right now, Mat Mladin and the Yoshimura Suzuki team have things pretty much under control. They made no mistakes in this year's Daytona 200, and they are right on the cusp of becoming a dominant force in AJtIA Superbike racing. This year's 200 was just another example of just how well prepared Mladin and his team are - and it's only the first race. Even when things go bad, they look pretty good. "Once again, we handled the tire situation good," Mladin said. "I knew that they had problems with tires. I knew that we could do the same. We'd done 22-23 lap stints there at the end or 21-22, pretty long stints at a pretty good pace, especially the first 10 laps. The team handled it good. The pit stop was around nine, nine-and-a-half seconds, about what we thought we could do them in. And we handled the tires. That last stint, a lot of people didn't know, but the first one when Miguel [DuHamel) had tire problems, so did I about the same time as him. But I didn't want to let him know that I had tire problems, so I tried to put my head down and forget about the tire as much as possible and use the front tire as much as I could and get a Uttle gap on him so he couldn't see a strip on me tire. And then I put a few seconds on him because he didn't know that I had a bit of a problem, and he slowed down a bit and I slowed down too. That's the way it was. "We had the same again [tire problems] with about six to go in that last bit there, and I knew we were going to have it. I was only half to three-quarter throttle around the banking, and that was it. The only time I was wide open was out of the first horseshoe and on the two straights in a dead-straight line. That was the only time I was wide open.' And Daytona is just the first step to the ultimate goal - a third-straight AJtIA Superbike crown. "I want to win this championship," MJadin said. "Everyon,,'s trying to find a way for someone elsl! to get up there and chalJeng" me and stuff. As long as I'm around, I will do "verything I can to win another championship and another and another one. Everyone says that I'v" won two. I heard it after I won one that I wouldn't be as dedicated. I heard it aftl!T I won two. Th"y've all got it wrong. They may as well forg"t about it because I'm hl!T" and I'm here to stay, and I'm going to try and win it." MJadin's new crew chief Peter Doyle knows what his rider is capable of. "He was obviously the major component," Doyle said. "He was fastest in every session, fastest from the first day, pretty much the fastest at the December test. He did it all. He had a few early problems with it. He couldn't get comfortable on the bike. Once he got himself comfortable on the motorbike and the riding position, everything started coming together." That may not bode well for the competition 8 MARCH 21. 2001 • cue I • n • _ s New Zealander Aaron Slight chases Tommy Hayden and Doug Chandler. Slight was running In the top six before his Ducati dropped a valve. Chandler finished fourth with Hayden fifth. The HMC Ducati team's AMA Superbike debut was also somewhat ominous. Adding to the disappointment of losing their star rider Russell to injury was the fact that Steve Rapp could only muster an 18th-place finish. Rapp's day was eventful. He had run as high as fourth prior to the second restart, but the alternator went out on that bike, forcing him to a backup bike for the final portion of the race. When the crew couldn't get the front wheel in the backup bike because of a different quick-change setup, he started the race a lap late. He then melted a sprocket and was fortunate to finish at all. "It was crazy," Rapp said. "I was up to fourth on the last restart; we made some adjustments. I think it would have been a better bike. 1 was pretty excited, and then the alternator went out. It was loose or something. It was grinding down. They saw it in the computer stuff. So they tried to change it. Then they ran out of time. Then they tried to go to the back-up bike, and they couldn't get the front wheel in because it was a different quick-change set-up than what I had. Then I went a lap down. I got going again, was running good, was passing people, and then the sprocket melted and I had to come in and get a new rear sprocket put on. And then it was sort of overheating, and that was it.' Then came the woes of the other Ducati team - Competition Accessories. While Pegram was fortunate to be able to race his back-up bike to sixth place after his crash in the chicane, that crash meant that one of the team's Ducati 996s left the facility in a sorry state (burned to a crisp) in the back of the team's transporter. Pegram's teammate Aaron Slight, meanwhile, got a taste of AMA Superbike racing that was so unappetizing, it may be difficult to keep him around. The Kiwi ran well all day, using the down-time after the red flags to make adjustments to his stillunfamiliar Ducati, but ended up with nothing as the bike dropped a valve on the 29th lap. "Coming out of the chicane, it just cUed," Slight said. "It was a bit slippery. We changed a lot of things over the day. We changed the gearing when we stopped the race and a few things on the back. It was all right - I just couldn't get out of any of the horseshoes, just spinning up too much. And it wouldn't run down the bottom - the bottom was a bit rich. I think today was really humid and didn't really adjust for that. Off the bottom, it was fairly flat, and then it would spin. We were sitting there, but we probably would have been in the top-five finishers." Yamaha's results were both good and bad. Tommy Hayden stayed out of trouble and kept circulating at a consistent pace, and he was rewarded with a fifth-place finish. "I felt good on the last start and was right there with Chandler and [Aaron] Slight, and somehow we lost Slight and then kind of chased Chandler till about the last five laps, and then he lost me in some traffic and I couldn't hang anymore," Hayden said. "I pitted and came back out, and he [Chandler] was about three or four seconds ahead of me, and I gained for about the first five laps, and then I about crashed a couple of times.' Anthony Gobert, however, didn't fare as well. A broken chain knocked him out early; he used the restart to get back in the race (four laps behind), and was charging through to what he hoped would be a pointspaying finish when the Yamaha chunked a tire on the front straightway ending his day for good after 40 laps. "I was going really fast," Gobert explained. "Then I came in and got a tire; as soon as I went out, the thing was a little bit bouncy. I thought it was out of balance; then I come around and I got a good draft On [Doug] Chandler - caught up to him, and got a good draft on him. As soon as I come off the banking, just about at click-top, it just went 'boom.' The tire exploded as I was coming down the front. I was just full-out; it went all the way out to the stops and then it ended up like freeing up, and then it

• Cover