Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

changing directions.' And once he changed directions, he got closer back to the bales than I thought he was going to and I clipped him and crashed. Wayne [Rainey, the eventual race winner] talked a little bit about that in the press conference. I think I watched it on TV as I was in the medical center. He was like, 'Yeah, I was catching Schwantz and I think he was feeling the pressure.' Next time I saw him a month later I said, 'Wayne you and I could still be racing - you wouldn't have caught me yet.''' Schwantz redeemed himself in 1988 the hard way. He'd earned the right to be the only rider on the new factory Suzuki, but it wouldn't run. It had an electrical short that cut in an out intermittently. "I was sailing off into the chicane and it spun a cylinder and stuffed me off into the grass on the inside, and of course that led to a big highside. I cracked a bone in my arm. Now I'm sitting there thinking, '88 was supposed to be new bike, new year, me and Daytona, this was supposed to be my time. Now, in just over a day, going from there to sitting in the hospital, going 'It's okay, I can race, can't I?'" And that wasn't the beginning of his problems. On the first day of practice, he was saiHng around in his new RS Taichi leathers when he noticed a warm feeling all over. "I looked down and the back [oil] line had come off the valve covers and it just covered me in oil. I mean covered, my whole body. And, meanwhile, I'm running around the track leaving oil everywhere and guys are going down. So I got in from that practice and everybody was like (Left) The worse problem, obviously, is a mechanical failure. Nicky Hayden slows out of the second horseshoe last year with a motor problem. He got a bit lucky, however, when a red flag allowed him to restart the race on a backup bike. He ended up 10th and salvaged some championship points. (Below) Some riders over the years have even had problems with pit signals lead to their ultimate demise. STORY AND PHOTOS By HENNY RAY ABRAMS nthony Gobert was rolling through Daytona's NASCAR Tum Four at about 170 mph when his rear tire let go. That isn't a good thing at Daytona, and Gobert knew it. The Yamaha R7 went full lock, and Gobert went along for the ride. What should have happened is unthinkable. What did happen was remarkable. Gobert rode out the disaster, shaken to the core and thankful to be unhurt. "I've just had no luck [at Daytona]," Gobert said during this year's Dunlop Daytona tire test. "I figure I'm more than overdue. If anyone's got to pay their dues, I think I have." Daytona is a race you don't so much win, as try not to lose. It's a race of survival and attrition; a race where you hope to leave with as many points as possible; a race that can set the tone for your season. Anything can go wrong at Daytona, and usually does. You can fall down and win, as Scott Russell did in 1995. You can fall down and lose, as Miguel DuHamel did in 1998. In the average Superbike sprint, there's a chance you could get a bad tire. At Daytona, you have at least three chances to get a bad tire. Any number of engine or mechanical or electrical components can fail. The riders you might lap three times at Loudon or Pike's Peak, you'll lap five times, and the closing speeds are frightening. Because of confusion over the AMA flagging system, you could get caught up in a pace-car pile-up, as a number of riders did in 2001. You could get stuck in the pits while your team fumbles with the quick-change wheels or gas cans. "From fueling to changing wheels in split seconds, gosh, it just makes you cringe thinking these guys are going that fast, and all this stuff happens in a blink of an eye," Gobert's team manager, Yamaha's Keith McCarty, says. "It's scary to think about. " Over the past three years, Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat MJadin and his team have been by far the kings of Daytona. Mladin won easily in 200 I, by a whisker in 2000, and lost by .014 of a second to American Honda's Miguel DuHamel in 1999. But his mastery is fairly recent. In 1996, Mladin's first time at Daytona on the Yoshimura Suzuki, he shagged his tires and finished 11 tho "I think I had five pit stops or something," Mladin says. "I didn't even know what Daytona was all about." On the Fast by Ferracci Ducati in 1997, Mladin only completed nine laps, and those were in vain. A broken fuel pump on his "A" bike meant he was forced onto his backup that would hardly fire. By the time he got going, he was well out of the hunt. Going into turn one, Mladin decided he'd had enough, pulled the front brake lever in and crashed. "I was sick off it. There was no point in me riding around there 10 laps down," he says. In '98 he started to learn how to ride Daytona, finishing fourth in Scott Russell's final win. Despite all his success, he says that Daytona is "definitely not my favorite track. It's dangerous. It's so dangerous it's unbelievable. " The last Suzuki rider to win the Daytona 200 before Mladin was Kevin Schwantz, and he did it back in 1988. Like Mladin, Schwantz didn't immediately take to Daytona. In Schwantz's first trip to Daytona, on the Suzuki GS-700, he qualified third, but didn't make a lap. The chain snapped in the run to turn one. The next year, Schwantz was leading on lap 34 when his race unraveled. "When I came by my pit board out of the horseshoe, I had a 13-second lead [on American Honda's Wayne Rainey]." Schwantz remembers. "Thirteen seconds at Daytona, I think it's from the chicane to the start-finish line. It's a ton. I was still head down. I didn't even think 13 seconds was anywhere near enough time. I tried to get past a back-marker getting into the chicane. He actually got into the chicane before I did. And I thought, 'I'll just slip past as he's a U c I e n e _ 50 • FEBRUARY 27,2002 21

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