Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128159
AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship Round 10: Road America me on the outside, kind of like you see in basketball with the pick, so the guys had trouble," DuHamel said. From there, he ran into a swarm of lappers in the final corner, the turn14 right onto the front straight. Hayden was in second and about to move on DuHamel when he braked early, forcing evasive action. Running wide, Hayden was a sitting duck, and Bostrom and Yates snuck by. Hayden recovered for fourth. DuHamel saw Hayden making his move and thought, "'If he turns that thing around, he's going to be coming pretty qUick,' but I think he had trouble turning it around. And there was a couple of lapped riders and I split those guys coming up to start/finish, and by then with the RC51, I knew nobody was going to come by. The only guy that had the chance was pretty much Nicky, and he blew it in that last corner and he made a mistake, and it worked out good." Hayden said that when DuHamel braked early he thought, "I had to Craig Connell (302) leads Jason DISalvo (440) In one of the privateer battles at Road America. 10 JUNE 19, 2002' cue I _ Zemke's Superblke debut was a good one. Riding the Injured Kul1ls Roberts' RC-!l1. Zemke finished eighth on Saturday and fifth on Sunday. chuck it to the left to avoid hitting him, and by the time I was able to get on the brakes I was way too high. I tipped it in and kind of just kind of lost the drive: On the last lap, Bostrom said he thought he'd better cool it, because, "I'd already about killed myself about seven or eight times in traffic on the previous lap. So, I just kind of cooled it and it kind of played to my advantage that time because Nicky [Hayden] slipped up, made a mistake. I think Aaron kind of got blocked going up the front straight by the lappers and we were able to get him, too." "I was just trying as hard as I could to get as good a drive out of this last turn, and the thing just didn't want to go," Yates said. "The tires were just saying, 'No, no.' Eric [Bostrom] just got the drive on me: Mladin had found himself in noman's land fairly early on. The front end of his GSX-R750 gave him little confidence, especially in the hard- n __ s braking and fast corners, like the Carousel. "I'm really losing all my time in the Carousel," MJadin said. "I've struggled to make my bike steer through there all week. Just no feeling. It's sort of the same problem I've had all year. Just no feeling. It's been all over with the bike: Mladin said he caught the leaders once in the Carousel and realized he wasn't on the pace. "I came in there five bikelengths behind Aaron [Yates] and came out of there 15 back. I just couldn't go any faster: Mladin was about 6.5 seconds behind Hayden, with 10 on Chandler. Another 10 back came Picotte, then Zemke. Chandler said he felt like the tire had spun on the warm-up lap. The result was that, when the tires go off, "instead of doing a nice, smooth, controlled slide, the thing would just slip-slide on you more, then it just heats up the tire more. It seems to make the tire drop off," Chandler said. "I had a couple of moments and I thought, I can't do nothing silly. We haven't had a finish since Sears [Point]. We've got to finish." In his first race, Zemke also decided to make the finish. On about the fifth lap, he realized he wasn't making any ground, so he decided to save his energy for the Formula Xtreme race. "That was made very clear to me, that Xtreme was my focus, that's what we're running for the championship in," Zemke said. "I just kind of chilled out on the thing and finished the race." RACE TWO Sunday's race didn't start smoothly. Miscommunications among various AMA officials caused starter Bobby Lemming to botch the start sequence. Hayden jumped the gun When Nicky Hayden set a new track record at Road America in qualifying on Friday, it was generally believed the mark would fall farther on Saturday. It did, but Hayden wasn't the one who lowered it. Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom was, the busiest rider in racing turning ultra-fast laps half a second under Mat M1adin's old record - good enough for the pole, and the precious point he needed in his quest to catch up to American Honda's Hayden in the AMA/Chevy Trucks U,S. Superbike Championship. The difference between the two days was in the conditions. Bostrom had been harshly critical of slower riders during Friday's shortened 50-minute session, less so on Saturday. The weather also cooperated. Friday's session was run in strong winds, with Saturday's hour run in more moderate weather. "I think the conditions were really perfect," Bostrom said after his lap of 2:08.510 set the new mark, and lowered the one Hayden had set on Friday. "The wind died down. I went out on a soft race tire and I was surprised how quick we went, actually. Then we put on a qualifier and didn't go quite so fast, "It seemed like traffic was less of an issue today. For sure there were some guys here and there. It wasn't like yesterday, Every time I went on the track there'd be somebody pull alongside in tum one not looking where they're going." Bostrom said the machine evolved to the point that "all it took in the end was a few little tums of pre-load and compression." Bostrom, like the rest of the front row, did his best time on a soft race tire, not a qualifier. Hayden said he didn't even mount a qualifier, then second-guessed himself. "Maybe I should go back and look at them: he said, before changing his mind. "Those things, I haven't had any luck with them. I just used a soft tire. Around here, grip's so good anyway, I actually wish I would've came in. My lap timer wasn't working and I didn't know what my time was, I almost wish I would have came in and got another new tire, just another new one and went for it again. Even on my fast lap, grip around here is really good." Hayden's best was a 2:08.784, quicker than he'd gone on Friday, but not quick enough for the pole point. As time wound down, Hayden said he was bedeviled by a few problems that caused him to pit more often than he would have liked. With a long track - the Road America course if four miles - and long lap times. time lost in the pits is magnified. 'We were having a little problem there toward the end and had to do two or three ins and outs and it cost us a little bit of time,' he said. "Then I just went back to my other bike and put on new tires and went for it. " Blimpie/Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates was third, also on a race tire, and the only rider on the front row to have tested at Road America. The Blimpie/Yosbimura Suzuki team tested at Road America just after the Road Atlanta race in late May, though the weather was bad and there wasn't much in it, Yates said. "We were here testing a few weeks back, but it was pretty cold, windy, and we were able to just come right out of the truck and go just as fast as we did then," Yates said. "We haven't changed much on the bike. Just a couple of little things. We tried some shocks this morning." The end of the front row belonged to American Honda's Miguel DuHamel, the French Canadian enjoying the benefits of a second motorcycle in Kurtis Roberts' absence. Even with two Honda RC-51 s, there were braking problems, not something you want on a highspeed. heavy-braking circuit. "We're having a bit of a brake issue and a couple of little things too," DuHamel said. "We actually ended up qualifying on a different bike because we just ran out of time to test all this stuff. It was the bike I wanted anyway. The brakes are actually working okay. It's just that the bike, I go in there, brake, and I think, 'Well, I'm not braking deep,' and I'm not, but the bike's telling me, 'Dude, you're really in hot.' It's a really big issue. Hopefully we'll be able to get a handle on that in the warm-up before the race." DuHamel said the problem areas were the downhill turn five, turn eight before the Carousel, and the right-hand Canada Comer. HMC Ducati's Doug Chandler was fifth in what is his team's home race as both of the Hansen Ducati shops are in Wisconsin. The Ducati 996 was impressively fast, topping out at 178 on the AMA radar gun at the end of the long front straight. Others went as fast, including Yates and DuHamel, with Nicky Hayden clocking a class best of 179 mph.