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AMAIChevy Trucks U. S. Superbike Championship Round 1 1: Brainerd International Raceway Hot, greasy, and bumpy is the best way to describe the three-mile road course during Superbike qualifying at Brainerd Intemational Raceway. Oppressive heat and humidity tumed the track into a skating rink, the sealant patches made it a slick skating rink, and the worsening bumps made it a slick skating rink with a broken Zamboni. By Friday afternoon, it was clear that Mat Mladin's lap record of 1:35.320 from 2001 would stand. "I'll be surprised if you see 5.3 (l :35.3) tomorrow, especially in this heat," Mladin said after qualifying on Friday aftemoon. He was right. Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom came closest, making use of the new bigger Dunlop 989 rear qualifying tire, which he'd used a number of times in his World Superbike appearances, to speed to the best time of 1:36.42 J. Bostrom jumped to the top spot with his penultimate lap, then bettered it with his final tour of the track. Even Bostrom knew the lap was nothing special. "I think everyone was disap· pointed today with the track being slow," Bostrom said. "Especially the first splits were just killing everyone. We're over a half a second slower than yesterday, even this moming. That's the way it goes. It's the same track for everybody. "It is a shame that the sealer is so poor out there because in the moming it was fine. This aftemoon you were out there and it was just kind of like totally messing up your rhythm because you're just kind of picking your way through it. And then the next thing you know, you're kind of going tentative through it and you're like, 'Man, what am I doing?'" What had bedeviled Bostrom on Friday was a machine that kept him from gliding over the ubiquitous bumps. The problem continued on Saturday, though with less severity. Fastest on Friday, American Honda's Nicky Hayden (above) ended up second to Bostrom for the thir'! race in a row. The runaway championship leader admitted that he didn't manage his time well in the last session, hurting his pole chances. "Just worked on a few things this aftemoon and kind of wasted too much time and waited to the last, last minute to put on a qualifier, and I went out and used a [Dunlop] 555," Hayden said. "Then I put on another qualifier and didn't go any faster with it. First time I used one I was a little bit tentative with it the first lap, and then the second lap I made a little mistake in tum two. I got on the gas and the thing just hooked up so good it was pushing. Had to roll out of it just a little bit to get it to tum in tum two and there's so much time there. Coming out of the last comer, I got on the gas, I don't know what happened, something happened and it didn't run." Hayden didn't immediately know the cause of the engine hiCCUp. Mladin also had an undiagnosed engine problem in the 50-minute qualifying session, though his was more costly. Less than two laps into Saturday's session, his Suzuki GSX-R750 developed an engine problem that sent him to the pits. The team spent 25 minutes swapping components between his number-one machine and his back-up which gave him only 20 minutes of qualifying time. With a shortage time, Mladin decided to concentrate on a proper race setup and not worry about doing one blistering lap on a qualifying tire. "I got out there with about 20 minutes on the clock and just tried to do a few laps and came in with four, five to go and had a look at the times and it just didn't seem like anyone was going to go much qUicker," Mladin said. "Eric [Bostrom) done a good lap there at the end. Other than that, we figured we're pretty safe so we've got some spare qualifiers now," What Mladin was trying to do was the same thing he's been trying to do all year, ."Just go around the racetrack the way I like. The track's really rough. Everyone's been saying that. Everyone's having the same problems. It's a fast track, you've got all that sealer. You've got to absolutely get the line perfect or you're sort of out in the sealer. And, in the aftemoon, it's really greasy. It's coming along. We're just trying to get some stuff sorted out for next year, really, trying to find some stuff so that when we go to Daytona in December we're sort of ready to go, pretty much. That's what we're all about at the moment." American Honda's Miguel DuHamel, fresh off his double win at Road America, qualified fourth, unable to improve on his Friday time. DuHamel also used the new qualifier, though he didn't get the most out of it. He'd tried to hook up with AustinfBleu Bayou Ducati's Pascal Picotte, but the plan backfired when Picotte's Ducati did the same. "Picotte and I were together out there and we were talking, the hand gestures, like get in front of me, and I'm like, 'You stay in front,' and then he slowed so I went by him and I looked back and I said, 'No, you get in front,'" DuHamel said. "I thought he didn't understand what I was saying, because I figured 'I'll draft you and then when I get by you can hook up with me.' And I got behind him and his bike was pulling good down the straight, so I went through one and two and three. As I followed him, it became apparent to me why he wanted me to be in front and not follow. His bike was cutting out really, really bad and I almost ran into him. Coming out of the comer, the thing would go 'kapoom' and that thing would just come back at me." That was DuHamel's second-fastest lap. His second lap on the tire would be his Saturday best, a I :37.410, slower than the 1:37.065 from Friday. Uke the others, DuHamel said that you had to be careful over the sealant patches and bumps. "Going into [tum] two there's one sealant right there that, when you tip it in, the front end moves, and then when the rear hits it, the rear end moves. It's not the most comforting thing going in there, about a buck-fifty or whatever the hell we're going in there, if not more. If that wouldn't be there, it'd be a lot better." 10 JULY 10, 2002' c: U c I _ n __ s there's a lot of places to pass when you have to." "I knew Nick was fast and he came along and it was hot and the tires started getting greasy and I kind of got shafted by some traffic and just couldn't put anything together for the last lap," Bostrom said. "It was kind of unfortunate. I really got blocked on the second-to-last lap." BusbOo1l and a_dow shake hands on the pocIwn as Hawden looks on. Chandler said the team had struggle all weekend in turns one and two right up to the start of the race. The tires weren't soaking up the ripples and were skipping and jumping. A qualifier masked the (Above) Local rider Robert Jensen was the first of the non-factory riders to cross the finish line, in eighth. Aided by his local-track knowledge, he beat Jason DISalvo (440), who finished ninth, and Andrew Deatherage (35), who ended up 17th. (Below) Mladin (1) chases Chandler, Roberts, and the rest of the leaders before retiring with engine problems.