Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship Rounds 15/16: Virginia International Raceway After finishing fifth on Saturday, Pascal Picotte crashed In Sunday's race. The French Canadian got going again and finished 11tho The finish was good enough to secure a very respectable fourth place in the final series standings. outside of the corner. Yates scampered onto the track and laid down. "I was just aggravated, you know," Yates said. "I couldn't believe that happened. I hate to say it, but I was kind of expecting something like that to go on. But that [Roberts') bike, it just kept chasing me." Yates said he didn't think his GSXR750 was that badly damaged, and that he'd be able to continue, if the race was stopped. "So I was like, 'Hey, screw it, I'm going for that,'" he said, "because I didn't feel like the bike was probably too bad. I knew it got into the airbag down there, probably. But, luckily, I was able to get it going." The team worked feverishly to replace all the bodywork and the steering damper, though not quickly enough to make the warm-up lap. He'd have to start from the pit lane. Mladin had taken the lead on the lap prior to the red flag, so he started from the pole. On the third start, he and Bostrom got away, Chandler third, with Yates ending the 12th lap in 24th. The next lap, he was 17th, then 10th, seventh, sixth, and into fourth on the 17th lap. Mladin and Bostrom were one-two, then Chandler, and finally Yates. DuHamel was well back at this point. During the second red-flag delay, his clutch was replaced. When the bike was fired, the clutch wouldn't engage, and he had to start from the pit lane also, losing a lap. "It's a mechanical clutch, the hydraulics of it, before it comes back out when you change it, it takes some time - between one and five minutes," DuHamel said. "Unfortunately with us, it took five minutes. I had no clutch, I couldn't get back out." He soldiered on to finish 25th, the only Honda running at the end. Fellow French-Canadian Pascal Picotte had an equally frustrating race. Picotte was in seventh when he tucked the front in turn four on the sixth lap. He was in the pits getting repairs when the race was redflagged, initially putting him a lap down. In the end, the scoring dispute 12 AUGUST 21, 2002' cue • was resolved and he was credited with an 11 th-place finish. Edge Motorsports' Michael Fitzpatrick caused the third red flag, on the 21 st lap. The final would be eight laps, Mladin on the pole next to Bostrom, Chandler, and Yates. Mladin led from the third restart, though it was clear his Suzuki was down on power, and he had to use all of the track to protect his lead at the end of the front straight. It wouldn't be enough. On the final run to the flag, Bostrom timed it perfectly, the slingshot move good for his fourth win of the year. Bostrom said that, because the finish line is on a curve, he "ended up kind of having to go straight towards it, and I ended up kind of getting in Mat's [Mladin] way a little bit after the finish line. So I'm sure it kind of shook both of us up. But, each lap we kind of ran into that, because on the brakes we had a few ... we were rubbing elbows on the brakes the prior laps before that, going into one. So it was pretty hairy, rubbing brakes when we were probably doing 160 or something, or, rubbing elbows doing 160, about four laps in a row." Bostrom admitted that the team had worked to keep up with the speed of the Honda RC-51, and it may have caused Saturday's engine failure. "You know, it just happens that maybe that same tweaking that took us from a win yesterday, you know, replaced us with a win today," Bostrom said. "And so I want to say I thank my crew for working as hard as they have. We had speed on these guys all weekend - it was evident in the trap speeds - and I'd like to thank them." Mladin skipped the podium ceremony, later returning to the team transporter to talk with various team members and the media. "Everyone thinks I'm pissed off for coming second, but I'm not," he said after his best finish of the season and third podium. "When I went across the finish line, all I thought about was the amount of work that we should Who's going where has never been so uncertain at the end of the year. A lot depends on the movement of two riders, American Honda's Nicky Hayden and Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom. Hayden's future Is up in the air. His management team was at VIR, though they were not forthcoming. Rumors suggest that the Yamaha Grand Prix team has expressed interested, as has Sito Pons of the West Honda Pons team. A source inside HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) suggests that talk of him going to MotoGP, which was active at the beginning of the year, has cooled. The possibility exists that he'll remain in the U.S. If he does, he'll team with Miguel DuHamel, in the second year of a two-year contract, and likely Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts, who was offered less money to return to the fold. Kevin Erion has Roger Lee Hayden under contract for 2003, but won't be re-signing Mike Hale. Jake Zemke and Alex Gobert, the two riders of the Bruce Transportation Group, are also available. Eric Bostrom is heading for Europe on Monday (See Briefly... ) and would like to race overseas next year, if the right deal exists. Convincing him to flog the ZX-7 for another year would require a Herculean effort. "Everybody's negotiating with everybody," Kawasaki team manager Mike Preston said. "We have an option on Tony Meiring for 2003. We'd like everybody to stay. All my guys have done a fabulous job." Blimpie/Yoshimura Suzuki's Don Sakakura has Mat M1adin and Aaron Yates under contract for 2003. Over the course of the weekend, Mladin said that he wouldn't race the Suzuki GSX·R750 again. If. he comes back, he said he'll race Formula Xtreme, though that's not likely. .. n .. _ s have done, that should have been happening this year, and that shouldn't have happened. I don't care if I come second or fifth. It's not the point. Or if I win, I'd be happier if I won because I won a race, and I didn't win a race all year. But I'd still be annoyed as I've been all year for the amount of effort my guys and myself have put in to get the results we got. "I had nothing good to say, and I didn't want to get up there and make a dick of myself and my team and the rest of them." Mladin said that his Suzuki GSX· R750 was the best it'd been all year, but it was still a handful. "Today... I couldn't ride any harder today," he said. "I ran a 25 and a half [1 :25] in that race, and the front tire was out of round, and it was chattering everywhere, and I was pushing as hard as I possibly could. I had nothing. I held my breath that whole race. I was chewing on the tongue on the brakes everywhere, just making sure no one passed me. I had nothing else. I had nothing left." Yates lost touch with the leaders as the laps ran down, but he never gave up hope. "We hung right there, and the last lap, lap and a half, I kind of got to watching them a little bit, because I knew Eric [Bostrom] was wanting to get up there, and then my arm was kind of bothering me, and I was just like, 'Well, we'll see what happens, maybe they'll kind of get together and maybe both of them will run off, and then I'll be able to slip by,'" he said. "But, you know, it just feels good to actually finish a race this weekend." All the stopping and starting took its toll on Chanlder. "I'm more into getting focused for "If the rules don't change, what's the point of doing what we're doing?" he said "If the rules aren't legitimately decent for next year, what is the absolute point of coming out because the [Honda[ RC-51 is going to get better. Development of the GSX-R750 has stopped. What's the point? I'm not going to come back next year, unless I can race for the lead. So I'm better off going to race in Pro Thunder or something. What's the point in coming back if you can't race for the win?» Jamie Hacking, the third member of the team, appears to be out of a job after a few too many crashes. "He couldn't get a ride at Disneyland," one mechanic said. Yamaha's team manager Keith McCarty said it was too early to speculate on what riders he might have. Until the rules and classes are set by the AMA, McCarty said there'd be uncertainty. "I guess we need a set of rules before we can make a decision," McCarty said. As for racing the current R·7, McCarty said, "I wouldn't say there's no chance, but I don't think it's really what we want to do!' Yamaha's Anthony Gobert expects to be back in the U.S. next year, though he said he's been shopping around. "I'm not sure," Gobert said when asked about his future, "it mostly kind of depends on what happens with the rules a little bit. I'm talking to a few different people, as most people are. Want to wait and see what happens. It's really early in the season, and it seems the silly season gets earlier and earlier every year. Pretty much everyone's waiting to see what happens." HMC Ducati's Mitch Hansen said he was hoping to hear about Ducati's American racing plans within a week. "From what I hear, they're trying to get all the riders signed up for IMotoGPI and World Superbike and that will determine what kind of budget, if any, they have for us. Ithink they realize that they have to have a presence in the U.S. Obviously, it'd be nice to be fully backed by the factory." This year, Hansen was given motorcycles, engines, and spares kits, but had to fund the majority of the race team out of his own pocket.

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