Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

BRIEFLY••• "That was the bigge st crash I've ever had," Yamaha's Anthony Go be rt , who 's raced in every series fro m the Au stralian Nationals to the 500 cc World Champ ionship, said of his highsid e crash in Friday qualifying , but " it could 've been worse, " Gobert took full respon sibility for the crash that caused him to withdraw from the mee ting . The most severe injury was a broken radius bone in his left wrist. He also lacerated his right elbow, which required stitch es , dislocated his righ t shoulder, w hich was popped back into place , and suffered a concussion . He said he was coming over the top of the hill in turn eight when he was highsided , The crash wa s caused by two factors. he said. having the wrong rear tire. and changed gearing , " I never use hard tires, I got a bit caught out. They need a co uple of laps to come in, " he said, He knew the harder rear tire had no grip , but no softer tires were available t hat session, Als o , the team had shortened the gearing on his Yamaha OW-0 1, and that magnified the dec eleratio n caused by engine braki ng, "I wa s going really fast over the hill and [when he shut the throttle off] the rear j ust came arou nd and highsided me . " Gobert said th at on impac t he we nt " c runc h, c runch , crunch, and then I we nt airborne , I went into orbit. I looked down and saw this was going to hurt , " Go bert said he thought the fo rce would break both anms. " I was getti ng smacked into the ground so hard that I lost my sense of bearings," Gobert said. " I went fro m the right side to the left and when I landed I was in the middle of the road , I thought I bro ke both arms, I could see a bike comi ng toward me, I was pre tty luc ky he didn 't run over me , It definitely ruins you r day in a real hurry . " Gobert continued rolling off the tra ck , coming to rest in the gra ss by the inside of the trac k, He said he hoped to travel to San Francisco to see Dr, Arthur Ting on Monday or Tuesday to have a screw installed to stabilize the wrist. His aim is to return for the Laguna Sec a AMAlWorld Superbike meeting on J uly 7-10 , "I' m still pretty gauzy," he said, In the end, Gobert was thankful the crash wasn 't as dire as originally reported, Initial reports from the infield medical center and Con cord Ho spit al report ed that he had a com pou nd frac ture of the right elbow , " My anm was cut open and I was bleeding , There wa s blood all over me ." he said. " It was a huge crash, Everyone who saw it was freaking out . They expected the worst . I didn 't come out of it too bad." Ironically, Gobert had been effusive in his praise for the improvements made to the circuit since he last raced here in 1999 , " The track is l oo -pe rcent bet ter now, " he'd said on Friday moming. " W hen I first rode here in '98. it wa s a little hit dodgy . There was no protection aga inst the speedway out side wall. Now there's air fence , they've got tires. A lot of part s of the track they've made it a lot safer and we thank the people here at Loudon for that. As a rider , it's much bett er to go out there riding knowing that if you do have a prob lem , that there is sufficie nt room to stop in time . They 've definitely made a lo t of improvements , and right now it 's a f un little trac k. " Some speculated tha t he'd made the comments jus t to rile up fellow coun trym an Ma t Ml adin, one o f many ou tspoken critics of the track. informa lly inspec ted the track durinq the lunch break on Thursday on their pit bikes. It was agreed that not enough had been done to the track to make it safer for the riders. " It just was n' t there," Chandler said. "They resealed the oval. but there wasn't anything done to the res t of it. " The most significant improvement from the riders' point of view was the addi tion o f Air Fence. The AMA worked late Thursday night installing Air Fence and made adjust ment s on Friday morning . Barric k said that once the decis ion was made to not race in the rain, the track offered up four jet-dryers and the personnel to run them, should they be needed . The iss ue of safety came to a head in New Hampshire, the riders decryin g the track as outdated , the track countering that they hadn't been asked to make any improvements, Many of the rider s were out spoke n, with tw o-time defending champion Mat Mladin serving as a lightning rod . "We 're profe ssional race rs. W e 've stated that we enjoy coming to New Hampshire, In the dry, the track is not the best , no doubt about it. but you can sort of put up with it a litt le bit. When things get made about the track 's a lot better and all these changes are made and million s have been spent that I've bee n reading on the Internet. we 're not going to cop that. We go into these [corners] every minute 10 second s, We were here last year and we can see what's been changed . It' s crazy , I've stated in my interview the ot her day on Friday , I'v e stated that modern-day motorcycles have outgrown this race track . I believe that. Tire development. motorcycle development... 180 hor sepower on this tiny litt le racetrack. This racetrack's been outgrown now for us. W e can put up with a couple of comers, but not every corner. There 's only one spot where you can fall off he re and not hit some thing · one spot. We're professionals. we're highly paid professionals, the manufacturers that employ us want to see us racing and promoting their products the be st we can and that' s w hy we stre ss safely so much . " The only improvement to the trac k wa s the applicat ion of a sealant to the mile oval, but not the road course . The surface of the oval portion of the track was also laser -level ed to make it uniformly consiste nt. The changes were clearly made to placate NASCA R, which has lost two drivers at NHIS in the past tw o years. Though the changes to the track may help car s, it does litt le for the motorcycles. " If NASCAR is saying okay , we don 't want to run on a place, I don 't know , because I don 't drive a NAS CAR , · Kawasaki 's Eric Bostrom said. " So I won 't be able to tell you if a NASC AR's safe on a track or not. We are the professionals in doing the bike rac- ing and we have the best opinions for what's the safest. " Playing Five Deg ree s of Separation with Charles C ho uinard you 'd need only two to get to convicted Mafia bos s J ohn Gott i. The connection? Sparks Steakhouse, one of New York's premier eateries, located on the east side of Manhattan just two blocks from the United Nations. What landed Gotti in jail. among other things, was his part icipation in the killing of then Gambino crime bo ss Paul " Big Paulie " Castellano in front of Spark s Steakhouse in the mid-'80s. Ch ouinard is spon so red by Sparks , their logo of a beef steer ironically stitched into the back of his leathers. " I know the owner, Steven Cetta, through so mebody else that used to race . He's just -a big motorcycle enthusiast and he asked how he co uld help," Choui nard said, Cho uinard was one of two Loudon regulars on the 750cc Supersport podium. Att ack Suzuki' s Richie Alexander grew up at Loudon befor e moving to the Nati onals fulltime . " I' m sure for Chuckle this is a big achiev emen t for him," Alexander said. " He's been really tryi ng hard over the years and I've been racing with him through the club years . I'm really happy to see him up here . For me, I expect it, that' s what I do . I'm just glad I was able to pull it off , A little bit of a rough day ." Rich O li ve r crashed out o f the MBNA 250c c Grand Prix - and he already had cracked a bo ne in his leg in a practice crash at N ew Hamp shire Internat ional Sp eedway on Friday. The all-time class lea der high - sided wh en a head b olt o n his Team Oliver/Sticke rsol ution s.c om Yamaha TZ250 stripped its elf and backed out wh ile he was going through the uphill turn three righthander. Cooling fluid poured out of the head, into the belly pan, and onto the rear tire, causing the wheel to step out and Oliv er to sail in the air, landing on his right ankle and posterior, "Failures of a kind like. that don 't ever happen, but when the y happen , it 's bad, " Olive r said after returning fro m a hospital in nearby Concord . · W e don 't run fiuid -retaininq things, so it all get s poured on the tire.· The hospital visit revealed a crack in his right tibia just above the ankle . Oliver had cracked the bone a number of limes before and asked the doctor to make sure this wa s a fresh break. S he assured him it was . He wa s given a soft boot and crutches . W ith the track essentially unchanged since last year , A MA officials decided that they would not race at New Hampshire International Sp eedway in the rain , according to A M A Road Race Manager Ron Barrick. " W hat' s cha nged? " Barrick asked , " If it couldn' t work last year [when the Superbike race was pos tponed until Monday beca use of the rain] why w ould it magically work this year? " Safetyw ise, the only change to the 1,6·mile road course w as a sea lant on the ba nking, Barrick said , and no t the roa d course, "The coating doesn't go all the way around. W e still have inconsistencies from one area to the oth er. " At Road America last week, Barrick had asked the riders to keep an open mind and deferred judgm ent on the rain issue until arrivi ng at Loudon . "I wanted to have a look and the riders wanted to have a look ," Barrick said. Once he got here, he, and a number of riders, including Kawasaki's Doug Ch andler and Yoshimura Suzuki's Ma t M ladin, but was able to walk, albeit gingerly , on his own pow er w hen he returned to the pi ts , The spill damaged O liv er 's 200 1 model Yamaha TZ 25 0, w hich mean t he had to race his 1996 model. Though the acciden t happened in a not part icularly unsafe area of the track , O liver was among the to p riders w ho were highly critical of the 1.6-mile roa d co urse , " II' s time to analyze the level of equipment we run at this place," said Oliver, one of the most vet - W hen Tom Kipp to ok the lead off th e start o f the Fo rmu la Xtreme race , it was the first time he'd headed a race field since the final 750c c Superspo rt race of the year at Pike's Peak International Raceway in 1999 , And it felt right. Kipp has a three-race deal wit h American Suzuki to ride the Attack Suzukis in place of the injured J ason Pridmore, Lag una Seca is the final of those three race s, Last week, at Road Ame rica, he was getting adjusted to being back in the racing environment. This week he felt more co mfortable. "These guys [the Attack Suzuki team] are doi ng a really good jo b, just helping me get the bike set-up," Kipp said. "They' ve got more experience with the bike than I do . It' s a handful. " Kipp said that he lacked the consistency he needed , espe cially aft er changes are made to the GS X-Rl 000 . " Wh en they make big change s on the bike, it takes me a while to get co mfort able on it. I get on this thing, and it makes quite a bit more power, but it' s not tha t light a mach ine . It doesn't work as well as a Superb ike , It feels like a bigger motorcycle. It's a bit of an adjust· me nt for me. N After missing out on the podium in his first two Fonmula Xtre me races, Bruce Transportation Group's Josh Hayes was on the podium for the second week in a row at Loudon, but it was work . " W e're just trying different things wi th the chassis . We keep loo king there for more chassis and looking there for more traction and make the things corner better and get off the turns , W e see m to be okay going in, but we have a lot of work to do to catch up to everybody else , Everybody did their homework th is year and came out gunning for us and they' re all doing really good . Another thing is the [Honda CBR] 929 is a stree t bike , For sure it's a good street bike, but we 're racing against Superbikes out there, The Suzuki is very clo se to the Suzuki Supe rbike with a big motor and the Yamaha they are riding is a full-on Superbike chassis with a big motor. " AMA rule s changes thi s year allow Graves Motorsports Yamaha to run an R-7 chassis with an R-l motor. " W e're at a littl e bit of a disadvan tage already , I'm just tryi ng to dig deep and find a way through these guys . I thought this would be my track, but this just wasn 't my day, I guess . " Kawasaki' s M ike P reston said the team had been informed about their restrictions for the Laguna Seca AMAlWorld Superbike weekend . In order to minimize any perceived compe titive advantage, the FIM told Kawasaki that they have to desig nate one motor cyc le for W orld Superbike use starting on Friday , Riders Doug Chandler and Eric Bo strom will also have their World Super bike morn ing free practices shortened by half an hour on Friday and Saturday , Preston said that they hadn 't begun testing the mandatory unleaded fuel for World Superbike. "W e' ll get eve rything from Japan because in Al l-Japan and W orld Supe rbike they run bas ically the same fue l. The weight's basica lly the same . There are no ot her changes . " The team applied to the AM to use their AMA numbers, 10 and 32 , but haven 't gotten a respo nse yet. The team wil l also have diffe rent tires , They'll get the Wo rld Superbike Dun lops for th e world rac es, " They [Du nlo pl have so me tire s tha t are not available to the A MA circuit, but since we 're contracted to Du nlop , we get those tires as wel l. " Valvoline EM GO Suzuki' s Be n S p ies bro ke his right collarbone in practic e at Loudon, but hopes to be ready to ride at Laguna Seca in three weeks. " I' ll be the re riding ,· Spies said, his right arm in a sling . The soon-to- be 17 -year-old from Texas said the highside happened exiting the right-hand turn three , " I guess I got on the gas a litt le early, " Spie s said, " It thre w me down ," His helmet broke the collarbone as his head hit the ground. Eric B o st ro m took th e wi nner's sha re o f $10 ,500 of the $65 ,000 Superbike portion of the $1 13,00 0 purse, the seco nd highest of the year after Dayt ona. Ma t Mladin earned $7000 for sec ond, with Aaron Yates earning $4500 for third . Of the $30,000 M BNA 250 G rand Prix purse, Jimmy Fil ice earned the $6000 winne r's check by taking the top spot. Harley"Davidson didn't have a very good weekend at Loudon . Mike S rmth dro pped out on the 21st lap with a sputtering engine and Pascal Picotte crashed, then remounted and finished 18th. " I think it went on one cyl inder, " Smith said. "It just kind of started to sputt er, like it was starving for fuel. " Picotte said that he hadn' t tested the VR -looo with a full load of fuel all weekend and the bike was a handful. "I just couldn' t get the thing stopped for a few laps . I ran wide every time . I started turning it a little bit early . Going in on the brakes , I just lost the front. " Picotte got going again, despite extensive damage, "The dash was broken . One handlebar wa s way down . There was a dent in the tank . The brake leve r was down . The tail section was broken . One exhaust was down , I lost a footpeg . I still managed to get going ." Yo shimura Suzuki' s M at M ladin will be fined $5000 and have one championship point taken away as a result of comments he titles, "There 's just not enough room here for anything to co me to a slo wer spe ed before hitt ing an obstac le . W e do n' t race at Phoenix [Int ern ati onal Raceway] any more and th is place has more wall area than Phoenix ever did. " I love the traditio n of this track , I love the people , I love the people behind it. but the bikes are going too fast for this surface - on any size bike. Plus, you 've got things like the track disintegrating and potholes. It's j ust not made during a front-row press con ference following his pole positio n performance on Sat urday at New Hamp shire International Speedway . Mladin will be fined for " conduct det rimental to the sport," acco rding to the AMA. In the press conference , Mlad in made critical remarks about Eric Bostrom and Lanry Pegram, and also singled out a new spaper report which he felt was inaccurate. On Sund ay , he and te am bos s D on Sakakura met with AMA Road Race Man ager Ron Barrick and Director o f Co mpetit ion M errill Vanderslice. The possibility of a fine and point loss were broug ht up at the meeting , The penalties were confinmed by the AMA on Monday night. The AMA is expe cted to issue a pres s necessary. .. release on the matter. eran riders , with over 20 years of racing experience and four class cu e I e n eVIls J UN E 27 , 2001 11

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