Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Vance £, Hines Ducati which overheated on the start line. Gobert set a new pole-position record in 1999, a lap that stood up until 2001, then blistered a tire on the sixth lap and ended up 11 tho Gobert was back in World Superbike in 2000, returning in 2001 when he blew a tire, but not before snapping a chain earlier in the race. The team learned from the tire explosion and made changes. "Last year, when that tire came apart, it ruined a lot of expensive stuff in the tail section of our bike, so we kind of made some adjustments for that," Yamaha's Keith McCarty says. Gobert's was the latest in a long line of spectacular tire failures. The old two-stroke triples and fours were the original tire shredders. The Daytona 200 was part of the Formula 750 World Championship in the mid-'70s. Briton Barry Sheene arrived at Daytona on a new TR- 750 triple. The bike was hellishly fast, but it ate a rear tire on the banking in front of the pits while Sheene practiced for the 1975 Daytona 200. The injuries from the crash put him out for seven weeks before he was able to rejoin the grand prix wars. The old Yamaha TZ- 750s shredded tires with such proficiency that there was tire cord showing on the rear tire of Venezuelan Johnny Ciccotto's race-winning machine in 1975. It got so bad that the race had to be run in two segments in 1977, won by Steve Baker on a TZ-750, though rain prevented a race two. More recently, in the early '90s, Dave Sadowski had a rear tire let go on the front banking and walked away. Ben Bostrom wasn't as lucky. Bostrom had a rear tire let go between NASCAR Three and Four during a winter tire test, sending him skidding along on his chest and suffering hand and chest abrasions. Nicky Hayden's been to Daytona twice with little more than frustration to show for it. The first time he went, in 2000, he was in a position to win, but pulled out of the draft a millisecond early on the run to the flag. Hayden inched incrementally ahead of Mladin before the line, but Mladin had the steam to take it back, and win by .011 of a second. Last year, Hayden had a motor problem on the third lap, returned to the pits, then rejoined the race after a red flag. He finished 10th. "Every time you go to Daytona, you learn so much," Hayden says. "That race is such a crap shoot, so much can go into it with the pit stops and all that stuff. I don't never like to make the same mistake twice." DuHamel, a veteran of the Florida wars, has his fair share of Daytona stories. He's run the gamut - winning, crashing, and suffering mechanical failures. "Daytona is such a mysterious place," DuHamel says. "You can have a pretty good setup and the bike is working good, and then you get on the racetrack and the thing just isn't going as fast as it was the whole week. One case in point was when I was racing with Scott Russell in '98. I was used to braking the same way going into the back chicane during the whole week. Everything was good, I was braking .Iate and everything was good. For the race, I was braking a little earlier and taking it easy. His bike was a lot faster than mine on top end. I was racing from the beginning and trying to get my team a little break for like two laps before the pit stop. I was trying to get an extra second or two so they didn't feel as much pressure. Anyway, I go in there and hit the brakes like I did in practice and it didn't want to stop. It's funny now, but... I hesitated and thought, 'Am I going to go straight here or am I going to try and make the corner?' If 1 tried to make the corner, I would still be in the race and would have a chance of winning it. I was hanging on by my fingernails. If I went straight, I wouldn't have any chance of winning Daytona. Anyway, I decided to try and make the corner, and that didn't work [laughs]. "Another year, we go out and tire test. We do millions of laps, testing tires left and right, right and left and we show up for the race on Wednesday, Thursday, going through every tire they've got. We find our tire combo, but when the race starts I have to make like six pit stops. I chunked the front, chunked the rear, chunked the front. I couldn't even get like 10 laps in without chunking something. I just kept coming in. I remember the last time I came in, I said, 'Should I go back out or should we just forget it?' We'd tested and tested and tested, and then we couldn't go more than 10 laps. It's kind of weird when the front starts coming apart, but it did that year. That was frustrating. You do your homework and then for some reason the tires aren't happy that day." Pit signals hampered DuHamel's run in last year's race. With confusion reigning supreme, DuHamel eventually crashed. "Last year, I had some pit-signal problems," he said. "That led to my demise. For four laps after my pit stops, and obviously I was in the hunt with Mat [Mladin], thinking, 'Okay, I need to know where I'm at to know how hard to push and this and that.' Without the pit board, you don't know where the hell you're at. So I'm out there running and 1 come around one time and there's no pit board. I think, 'Okay, I can take that.' Then I come around again and there's no pit board; the third lap - no pit board. The guy is just looking at me waving his arms like, 'I don't know.' I'm thinking, 'Well, what the hell am I doing out here then?' And then I don't know if I hit some oil or something, but I lost the front. At the time it was really frustrating because everybody got to crash and destroy bikes and still restart. I tip it over for nothing, don't get hurt, didn't hurt the bike, then I ride it in, thinking we'll change the clip-on and go back out - but I cracked a radiator and my race is over. Pit signals are really, really cru- on backwards, the three was on backwards. I'd come around and look at my pit board and go, 'Uh, I think there's something wrong with that pit board. Is the five supposed to be going this way or that way?' That day, I was fortunate to have everybody covered and it wasn't a big problem. Hey, at least there was something on the board to look at. That was a funny one." As most will attest, there are a lot more war stories from Daytona than there are comical ones. CN cia!. You've got a lot of information going through your brain and you're worrying about this and that - you've got to be just concentrating on racing. Especially at Daytona, because the tires are so hard to manage." The French Canadian's other pitboard story is somewhat comical - at least now it is. "In '91, I had pit-board problems, but not because I didn't have a pit board," DuHamel recalled. "I had a pit board, but my pit-board guy back then was dyslectic - so my five was ill)ffi1lt®trilffi ~Ih1 llITffi

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