Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

nan having crashed out of the first race before finishing sixth in the second. His teammate Aaron Yates looked to be on the verge of a solid weekend after finishing second behind Gobert on Saturday, but then it all went wrong for him on Sunday when his GSX-R750 expired in the early going. Yates is sixth it the series standings - 45 points behind Hayden. Eric Bostrom's problems continued in the first race when his Kawasaki's clutch failed on the opening lap, but he was able to bounce back to finish second to Hayden in the second race. He's 46 points behind. Doug Chandler is 50 points behind Hayden, but he can at least take solace in the fact that this was his first event of the year. And quite a first event it was. Out of work just a few weeks ago, Chandler returned to AMA Superbike racing with a bang finishing fourth in both races in his debut on the HMC Ducati. His fourth on Sunday would likely have been a second if the race hadn't been stopped prematurely when track workers couldn't remove a crashed bike from the middle of the racetrack, forcing the AMA to bring out the red flag with four laps remaining. At the time, Chandler had been gaining nearly a second a lap on the Bostrom/Mladin battle and likely would have beaten both of them to the checkered flag. The man who lies 10th in the championship standings is the man whom Chandler just replaced at HMC Ducati, Pascal Picotte. Jobless just a week earlier, the Austin/Bleu Bayou Ducati team scooped Picotte up and he rode to a pair of fifth-place finishes over the course of the weekend even though the team was thrown together at the last minute. Toss in the fact that Picotte was using Michelin tires for the first time in years, and you can't help but be impressed by the first-time results of the newest Ducati team. The two factory men who find themselves the farthest behind Hayden are his teammates Kurtis Roberts and Miguel DuHamel. Roberts suffered a crash during qualifying in Fontana that left him with an injured knee and the Californian was a nonstarter in either race. DuHamel crashed out of Saturday's National and finished seventh on Sunday. Roberts trails Hayden by 89 points after three races and DuHamel is 90 points in arrears. If being 50 points behind means Mladin is in a hole, then these two are in a mineshaft. With the factory/semi-factory men now numbering nine with the addition of Chandler, the top privateer finishers at California Speedway were Lee Acree and Brian Parriott. Acree ended up seventh on Saturday while Parriott rode to a ninth-place finish on Sunday. RACE ONE After sitting around for nearly the entire day, the weather cooperated Sunday's final saw a good battle for second place between Mladin (1) and Eric Bostrom (32) • a batUe that eventually went Bostrom's way. and the track was eventually made dry enough for a 20-minute practice session prior to the start of the 28-lap race, held under ominous skies and very late in the afternoon. Those who had stuck around to watch the proceedings weren't disappointed as the race turned out to be a good one. It began with Yates stealing the lead from the start, holding off his teammate Mladin with the pack charging from the pit road into turn two. And there wasn't a factory Kawasaki in sight as Bostrom was already coasting, the clutch gone on his ZX7RR. They completed lap one with Yates leading Mladin, Gobert, Hayden, DuHamel, Chandler, Hacking and Picotte with a gap back to Craig Connell, Acree and Rich Conicelli. Mladin was in a hurry and he quickly dispatched of his teammate Yates, putting a gap of 0.7 of a second on him by the end of three laps. Gobert, meanwhile, saw Mladin making a move and hustled his way past Yates heading into turn one to start the fourth lap. Just as quickly, he was past his countryman Mladin in turn two and into the lead. The next of the factory men to depart was DuHamel, with the French Canadian sliding to a stop on the exit of turn two. He was able to remount, get repairs and get going again. His race would come to an end on the 16th lap when he pitted again and then couldn't get his RC51 off pit lane because of a clutch problem. "The race was going not bad," DuHamel said. "The guys pulled me out a little bit when I hit the curbing coming on to the front straight and got a pretty vicious tankslapper. I lost some time. I was aware of those guys breaking away so for the next two laps, two and a half laps, I reeled them back in so I felt pretty good about that. Going into that corner we've been having problems... there are two things: the bike and my boot. I don't have the right size boot on so I've been having trouble with that. I couldn't get the downshift right and I was struggling to get the downshift going into that corner and it just messed me up going in there. I didn't think I got into first, but they said I did get to first but I think that happened when the bike went down. I just couldn't downshift right. It must have looked like I was doing some sort of Lords of the Dance while trying to get down to first gear. It didn't want to downshift smoothly and that threw me off. I think I went a little tighter and there's a bump there, which I should know better. I hit the bump and it bogged out the front and lost it." Mladin's race started to unravel shortly thereafter as he went from second to sixth in one lap, the rear tire having spun on the rim. Then the tire started to come apart. He would fade to seventh, though that would end up being sixth. "We aren't exactly sure of the reasons why, but all that we do know at the moment is that the tire has spun 180 degrees on the rear-wheel rim and basically destroyed itself," a frustrated Mladin said. "We are looking a few things, but it is possible that some new wheels that we have for this year may not be the right sizes and the tire has not beaded correctly to them. For tomorrow's race, we'll go to last year's wheels and hopefully the problem won't be there." By the halfway mark, there were five guys with a chance to win, though the Chandler and Hacking duel was 2.8 seconds behind the lead trio - with Gobert leading Hayden and Yates. Traffic would playa role on the 16th lap when Gobert was balked enough coming on to the front straight to allow Yates to draft by. Then the Georgian got serious and put 1.4 seconds on the Australian by the end of 18 laps. That grew to two seconds a lap later "I got held up a little bit at one point by a lapped rider and Aaron [Yates] got past," Gobert explained. "As soon as he got past, he put his head down and all of a sudden disappeared. I had to rethink and regroup, put my head down and try to catch him because he had quite a big gap on me. I kind of burned my tire up in the process. I know Aaron's riding style and he's pretty hard on the tire, so I was kind of hoping he was in the same boat. I was worried about the a U c I • tire maybe not getting me to the finish because it was really coming around on the way into the corners and everything. I knew with Aaron you can't give him an inch because he'll take a mile, so I kept hammering as hard as I could. Aaron is tough to beat, probably the toughest of anyone out here. Once he gets a sniff of it he's really, really hard to keep back." Gobert kept fighting and his break came on the 23rd lap, when Yates ran into turns five and six too hot, running wide and allowing Gobert to slip up the inside and into the lead. By then, Hayden was almost two seconds behind. He would gain a little bit, but a bad run through traffic late in the race caused him to abandon the chase - ending his win streak at five. "Right at the beginning, I got up there," Hayden said. "Right off the start, when I was fourth, I thought, 'Man, this is going to be a good race here.' I felt all right at the beginning, but I just wasn't that comfortable the whole time. I was having a few problems and was just kind of hanging on to those guys. Right there at the end, I really put my head down and was going to try and make a run at 'em, but I just didn't really have it today. These guys rode good. They were really beating me in traffic, both being really aggressive. I had a hard time getting the bike where I wanted it in traffic. I was just real lazy and couldn't hold it tight coming out of the corners to get inside of 'em. That's where they were a lot better than me today. We had a nice little streak going and I wanted to keep it going. At the end, I was taking a few chances and the last few laps I knew I had to back it off and just finish. I was pretty happy because I fell back and when Aaron ran wide I could close back up." That left the battle to be fought out among two: Gobert and Yates. Gobert would lead the rest of the way, shadowed throughout by the Georgian. It would come down to the final corner. Gobert was balked, giving Yates hope of a draft move at the finish line, but those h.opes were quickly dashed when Gobert was able to hook into n e _ S • APRIL 17, 2002 17

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