Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAlChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Series Round 6/7: Road Atlanta It's totally detached from the ground, dancing everywhere. It kind of does that around the whole track. If we slow down, we can stick the line, but he moment I try to be aggressive and stick some lines, it's like skating. It's like I'm riding a hoverbike. We get passed on the back straight, but I'll pass 'em back on the brakes. The problem is we can't get around the racetrack. In the second part, I was optimistic, but seriously by the time we got to the third turn, I was like, 'We're in big trouble.' Nothing seems to work." Bostrom had managed to hold off Mladin in the restarted race, something Picotte couldn't do as the Australian shot past the Ducati rider on the final lap in turn 10 to take a hard-fought fifth. To say that Mladin was disappointed would be an understatement. "I sucked it up, but I still finished fifth," Mladin said, succinctly. But it was a closer fifth. "Yeah, it was real close - what was it three seconds, probably even more than three seconds, in eight laps? Ah, mate, big move to get myself into fifth there at the end. Great. Half a second a lap. I can't ride the bike the way I want to ride the bike, the way I used to ride the bike. I'm not expecting anything for tomorrow - unless they find something tonight. The bike won't go around the middle of the corner. Simple. I used to go in hard, get around the middle and get out. Now I get in hard, don't get around the middle and don't get out." Picotte ended up sixth, his first non-fifth-place finish of the year, with Hacking seventh. Some 34 seconds behind Hayden came the best of the privateers . Barnes on the Hooter's Suzuki GSXR750. He led home a group that included Livengood and Pegram, the The men of the day: Bostrom peft) and Hayden (right) talk about their classic battle. 12 MAY 29. 2002' cue I • second Hooter's Suzuki rounding out the top- 10 finishers. RACE TWO In front of what was easily the largest crowd ever at a motorcycle race at Road Atlanta (a claimed 60,000), fast-starting Bostrom was again the man with the golden clutch hand as he stormed into tum one with the lead. Again, the factory men followed him, led by Picotte - from the second row. Hayden was off to another slow start and ended the first lap in fifth place. "' got a bad start, and I'm kind of disappointed because at Sears I got such good starts," Hayden said later. "I was thinking, 'Well, I really got it figured out on my starts.' I guess maybe I got a little too confident in them." Up front, Bostrom was doing the only thing he could: He was trying as hard as he could to get far away from the rest. He knew Hayden would be coming, it was just a matter of when. "I just knew that I had to be real aggressive, and I was hoping that the track would break as many guys as possible," Bostrom said later. "At the beginning, I'm not sure how I wanted to do it, but in the race I think that it was just kind of our strategy to try to go fast and get a good shot." By the time Hayden sliced and diced his way to second place, Bostrom led by just half a second. His lead would last until the ninth lap. At that point, Hayden passed him down the back straight, Bostrom fought back on the brakes in turn 10, but Hayden countered with an inside pass in the final corner. DuHamel, meanwhile, was still close. Real close. He would stay that way until they encountered traffic. The two leaders gapped him, and he had nothing left to fight back with. He settled for third, happy to be continuing what has been a complete revival of his season. n .. _ s "Nicky's the winner, and I'm up here on third base," DuHamel said. "But I'm really happy with that, still. You know, the guys are working rea 1ly hard. I took a look at that chart there; I got some great splits, some good lap times. We just need to put it all together for a weekend. "I'm happy to provide relief for Eric [Bostrom]," DuHamel joked. "I could tell his head was down and his neck there ... he was getting really stressed out, so I backed off. These guys did a great job through traffic and everything. I need to maybe put some guards on, some lever guards, and start going in there a bit better. But these guys are doing a really great, great job. They got away, and after that it was just bringing it home." Behind DuHamel, Yates was charging. On the same lap (15) that he finally disposed of Picotte, he'd seen his teammate Hacking crash out of the race at the bottom of the esses. Up to that point, Hacking was having an improved ride over the day preVious, he and his crew having opted for a softer-compound Dunlop. He ended up pushing the front and crashing, giving Yates the opportunity to move into fourth. Yates would go no further, though not without effort. He simply could not catch DuHamel. Picotte, meanwhile, was a safe fifth, miles ahead of Mladin. According to his crew, Picotte had worn through the front tire thanks to putting too much compression in the front fork. Still, the team is learning all the time, and Picotte was closer to the front than he had been all year. Mladin was another story. He finished sixth and was clearly unhappy about it. The thought of an upcoming The privateer battle on Sunday was riveting with Jason DISalvo (440) passing BrIan Parriott (146) on the final lap to finish seventh. test at Road America did little to satisfy him "I probably didn't do as much as I could, but I wasn't going to do any better so I wasn't going to do anything stupid," Mladin said. "We've got nothing to test. All we're doing is running through stuff that we've got. Nobody has stepped up. Suzuki hasn't stepped up to give us anything to try, any different frames, any different stuff. Like I said before, we've got to keep Kenny Roberts [Junior] happy and that's all that seems to matter at the moment." Fortunately, there was no giving up in Bostrom. He fought hard, staying close enough to Hayden to make a noble charge in the closing laps. It all came down to the last lap, and it was one to remember. Bostrom got himself close enough on the exit of tum seven to draft even with Hayden on the back straight, going deep on the brakes (too deep) while running the Kawasaki up the inside into turn 10. He passed Hayden on the brakes but had little chance of holding his line. Hayden waited and slipped back under his friendly rival to score the victory. "My last lap, I made some mistakes, and coming down into the last corner there was just... my bike was faster today and it was hitting the rev limiter in sixth gear," Hayden explained of the final lap. "I had a different motor that I think was a little bit faster, so it was causing it to hit the limiter right at the end. And I got in there pretty deep. And I knew, well, I figured, no matter how deep I got in

• Cover