Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

[j]&JDffD !1@&J@0 U@ !XJ&Jrz@)@ffD9~ !1WDff@ Mladln 11) had one of his better weekends of the year after receiving new suspension parts for his Yoshimura Suzuki. He finished fifth in race one on Saturday but was able to get It on the box In race two the following day with a third. Pascal Picotte 121) had a strong race on Saturday, finishing fourth, but crashed the following day and ended up 31st. fought through to a fourth-place finish on Sunday. Hayden's teammate, DuHamel, was consistent, finishing seventh in both outings to secure his third-place spot in the title chase. The rest of the facto- ry men were somewhat inconsistent. Pascal Picotte rode his Austin/Bleu Bayou Ducati to a season-best fourth on Saturday, but he crashed on Sun- Mladin's teammate Aaron Yates day, restarted and finished 31 st. A finished a distant third on Saturday broken but looked threatening on Sunday Ducati's Doug Chandler out of Satur- footpeg knocked HMC before a crash took him out of the day's race, but he bounced back to battle at the front and he ended his finish fifth on Sunday, and Jamie day with a gashed elbow that required 18 stitches to repair. Hacking rode his Blimpie/Yoshimura Suzuki to eighth- and sixth-place fin- Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts ishes over the course of the two-day showed improvement in what was event, still suffering the lingering just his third race back after an early- A rainstorm shortened Saturday morning's final Superbike qualifying session at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course - a day after a wet track had mostly ruined Friday's qualifying session. Those who saw Saturday'S rain coming planned accordingly. Those who didn't were left wondering what if. American Honda's Nicky Hayden (right) was one of those who saw showers on the horizon, or at least his crew did. With rain on the way, Hayden put his qualifying tire on earlier than normal and it paid dividends, with the championship points leader able to lap at 1:27.130 to take his third pole position of the season. "Yesterday, tbe track was still a little bit wet, yesterday at the end of the session, and I got down there close, but I just couldn't get over a mental block where I was still seeing wet spots here and there, to really charge on the dry places,' Hayden said. "It was all right. I mean, we were sixth yesterday, but I knew we were way better off than that. I wasn't really sweating that as long as it was dry today. So it's nice to get on pole like that, but tbis weekend's going to be a lot different with the weather and everything. I haven't had a pole since Atlanta, so it's pretty good to get on pole and get a point. It felt really good this moming in the dry. We defmitely changed a few things on the bike that worked really good, so I was real happy, real comfortable out there. It was just one of those deals where our timing was good. We used a qualifier, put on a qualifier and went faster, and it rained right after that - so our timing was spot on. It worked out good. My team had it kind of planned out, you know, how they did it. Merlyn [Plumlee, his crew chief], he's on top of all this stuff, the weather. I leave all this stuff up to him, pretty mUCh. Those guys are awesome. They take care of it." Mat Mladin saw the clouds on Saturday but thought the rain was going to stay away. Turns out he was wrong and he never got the chance to throw a qualifying tire on the back of his Blimpie/Yosbimura Suzuki. He wasn't the only one, however, and his lap time of 1:27.820 was still good enougb to earn him the second spot on the grid. "I don't think I found any more speed from yesterday," MJadin said. "I think I done [1:27] 7.8 in the moming [practice] or something, the same time as wbat I did today. It was just a hard session to get a good lap time going. I didn't really time very well with the rain and stuff, so... qualifying really wasn't a real qualifying for me. I just didn't get a tire in or anything. So tbat's the way it is. That was it. And even with all the lapped traffic out tbere, it's almost ridiculous. They're going that slow, it's dangerous." MJadin was defmitely hoping for a dry race. "It's [wet conditions) always a worry on a track with a surface like this because you don't know if you're going to finish the first lap, let alone the whole race," MJadin said. "You run on the concrete, or in one of the cracks, or one of those pieces of rubber in any of the comers, then you never know if you're going to come out the other side. So that's just it. That's the way it is. There's that many surface changes here, it's so hard to be consistent in the rain.' Third fastest on a cloudy Saturday moming was Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom, the Califomian crashing his" A" bike early in the session at very high speed - the bike destroying itself in the tum-two crash. Bostrom had crasbed right after putting on his qualifying tire. He went back out on his backup bike, fitted with race tires, and held on to a front-row qualifying spot with his lap of 1:27.894. Bostrom escaped without serious injury, a bruised hand his only problem. "It was really ugly," Bostrom said. "I was okay and sliding, then the bike started bouncing and I thought it was going to hit me. I started doing the backstroke to get away from it.' Friday's fast qualifier Aaron Yates ended up on the outside of the front row after his 1:28.012 lap, another caught out by the rain. "We came in, stuck it [a qualifying tire] in and went out and it started raining," Yates said. "It cost me, for sure." The second row would consist of HMC Ducati's Doug Chandler, Yamaha's Anthony Gobert, Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts and Austin/Bleu Bayou Ducati's Pascal Picotte. effects of his Laguna Seca crash with season injury ruined his season. Roberts in the form of an injured back Roberts was sixth on Saturday but and foot. ting the jump on the field off the line. That lead didn't last, as Bostrom jetted Yamaha's Anthony Gobert, meanwhile, suffered through another miserable weekend. The Australian rode by on the run to turn one. "He [Mladin] hit the brakes and I didn't: Bostrom said later. And with that single bold move, to a 10th-place finish on Saturday before pulling out of Sunday's race, not strong enough to compete with Bostrom was in front. And gone. The man who is inarguably the most capable of putting in the fastest early his still-mending broken leg. The best of the privateers ended up being HSA's Brian Uvengood, the laps was out front and pUlling away. Mladin, meanwhile, was going backward - or actually, the others were going forward. They could see Georgian posting respectable ninthand eighth-place finishes in the two races. RACE ONE Bostrom making a break and now was not the time to be patient. Hayden passed Mladin on the back With a delay of a bit over half an hour because of a water-seepage problem in turn one (see Briefly ... ), straight, and Yates did the deed to his the race got started with Mladin get- teammate shortly thereafter. But the story was Bostrom. After just the first lap, he was 2.1 seconds Miguel DuHamel chases Yoshimura's Jamie Hacking. DuHamel would end up seventh in both races, while Hacking took an eighth and a sixth, respectively. cue. e clear. That gap grew another second a lap later and there didn't seem to be any end in sight to the gap he was pulling on his pursuers. By the fifth n _ _ S • AUGUST 7, 2002 11

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