Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Yet. (201 holds off Eric ao.trom 13:Q In the tlrst race. yates finished _ond with Bostrom tald fourth. pretty sure Aaron [Yates] went with something a bit harder. It definitely seemed to help." Meanwhile, Pridmore had continued his charge, and it had taken him past Roberts and into sixth place, with Roberts dropping off the pace the victim of a sore shoulder. By the 19th lap, Yates was looking serious in third as he began cutting into the gap to DuHamel. With 11 laps to go, he trailed the French Canadian by 3.4 seconds, and there was more to come. With a clear track between the two, Yates continued to carve away at the Honda, and after 20 laps he was just 3.1 seconds behind DuHamel. A lap later and that gap was down to 2.3 seconds. It looked as though Yates would have enough laps to challenge. Gobert, meanwhile, dropped out on the 19th lap, the Ducati parked at the end of the dragstrip. Pridmore was another rider who wasn't done charging. On the 21 st lap, he moved around Ben Bostrom to take over fifth place. Impressive stuff. But again, Pridmore's luck turned sour as he ran out of gas on the final lap, the Californian having to push his GSX-Rl 000 across the finish BRIEFLY••• The AMA impounded the cylinders from the factory Kawasaki ZX6Rs after the Superstock final at California Speedway. including race-winner Tommy Hayden's. "The cylinder heads were impounded." AMA road race manager Ron Barrick said. "We impounded them and are checking them. We didn't have stock ones to check against. so the process is ongoing." Kawasaki team manager Mike Preston refused to comment. One rider who probably wouldn't have minded if the entire weekend was washed out was Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts. Roberts, who suffered a separated shoulder in a crash in dirt track training three weeks ago, was readying to take to the track for the first time on Saturday, though the track seepage problem ended up preventing that. "It's not optimal, but it's okay," Robert said on Saturday. "It has to be." The only riding that Roberts had done since suffering the injury was a streetbike ride in the days leading up to the Infineon round. "I rode a streetbike for two hours around the house," Roberts said. "But nothing over the speed limit. " The Yoshimura Suzuki team surprised a few of the other teams when it signed up for Formula Xtreme, allowing Mat Mladin and Aaron Yates to get some extra practice laps. The strategy worked well - especially with the drastic cut in practice laps due to the weather and seepage problems that basically washed out everything but racing action on Sunday. Never one to miss an opportunity to take a shot at the competition, Mat Mladin was asked after the nrst race if he thought the margin of victory was surprising. To that he said: "As you know, everyone has been complaining about how fast our bikes are. With all the big, long straights here, that's how we won so easiIy." He did, however, expect the rest to get a little closer in the second race ... Anytime you are behind in a race, you have to make some changes to try to catch up," Mladin said. "Now that we've won, we don't want to make too many changes because our bike was relatively good. We know the other guys will make changes, and they will probably close up. That's just the way it goes." Ben Bostrom gave a succinct response to the track changes at Infineon Raceway. "It's a lot safer," he said. "There's a few corners where you had to run 90 percent. and it's nice that you can now run 100 percent in every corner. There's also two more passing spots, so it's kinda cool. " Mat Mladin continues to have to explain the differences between last season and this one. "I guess last year pissed me off," Mladin said. "I just don't feel that we had enough people in the right places working hard enough to get the results last year that we had the three previous years. I think they realize that winning championships is not easy, and a guy just can't keep picking up something that's not working and winning races and championships. It caught up with us last year, and Nicky [Hayden] smoked everybody. On line in ninth place. After 22 complete laps, Yates was right on DuHamel and looking to make it a Yoshimura Suzuki one-two finish. Later that lap, Yates made the move in turn seven to take over that second spot. And he wouldn't give it back. "I came up on Miguel pretty good because traffic held him up really bad one lap," Yates said. "I was able to cut through the guys pretty well. When we came around the Carousel, he was trying to drive out hard, and I was too. I was trying to get up around the inside to be on the inside on the brakes, and his bike spun up a pretty good bit, and he just lost his drive. I had a good drive going and just went right on by him." Then he pulled away. Rather easily. End of drama. "I really blew the start there," Yates said. "I was just lucky to be able to get by the guys as easily as I did. The Suzuki is running real well, and I just put my head down and tried to charge forward. I could see the gap on the guys in front of me, and I really wanted to try and close it up, but Mat [Mladin] just kept a good pace going, and Miguel [DuHamel] came back to me. We pulled out a second so I guess that's the best we could have done in that race. Hopefully, in the 750s that we had in the past, racing against these V-twins, you had to have everything 100 percent. or there was no hope. And we didn't even come close last year. This new bike is good. It's nice to be able to accelerate away with these guys. It's nice to be able to get in the draft and make a pass in a straight line for once in eight years. That's probably the things that sum it up: I was angry: my training hours have gone up three-fold from last year. so now I can run as hard as I possibly can right up until the end of the race: and the bike is better. " Ben Bostrom continues to adjust to the Honda ReS1 after spending the last few years on factory Ducatis. "There is nothing the same about the two bikes," Bostrom said. "The only thing is that they are both twins. They're both great bikes, and we're getting the Honda close. I think when we get to the fast tracks, the Honda will show how stable it is. We're gelling it dialed in, and it's getting very fun to ride. " So what was it like running two races in the same day? No big deal for the top guns. ''I've been racing two races on Sunday for a long time," Aaron Yates said at the end of a hectic Sunday. "This is the first time I haven't ridden the 600 in awhile. Me and Mat talked about it on the podium, and we think it's pretty neat to get them both done in one day. We kinda agreed that it wouldn't bother us if we just showed up on Sunday morning and went racing. I think it's good." Ditto for Ben Bostrom. ''I'm used to racing two races in a day," Bostrom said. "I just think if they changed the format, it would help the whole deal. You'd get all your practice and testing time and really focus on qualifying and make it an event - put it on TV and make a big deal out of it. It's always fun to watch qualifying. It's just as exciting as the race. Then on Sunday, show up for two doubleheaders. " Mat Mladin went one step further. He thinks the weekend schedule at all the races should almost emulate what the rain caused at Innneon. "I think we need to ditch Friday and just tum up on Saturday and go practice and qualifying and two races on Sunday," Mladin said. "I think it's better. It cut costs and makes it more exciting for everybody, rather than show up at the track halfway through the week and go racing." Mladin talked about Miguel DuHamel in the post-race press conference after learning that DuHamel might be out of action after suffering a broken collarbone. "It's one less guy on the racetrack, but the one thing about Miguel [DuHamel] is that you never know what he's going to deliver," Mladin said. "One day he might be a little bit off, and the next day... honestly, in the first part of that first race, I was shaking my head going, 'Where is this coming from?' The guy was just on the gas. He was flying. I had an idea what rear tire he had on, so I didn't think it was going to last the whole race, but you never know with Miguel. He's superfast. as he showed at Daytona. He's just won his fourth Daytona. It's a blow to the series [if he misses racesl because a lot of people come to watch him." A new system of qualifying the Supersport and Super- the next race we can go one better, but we'll see." Mladin won by just a tick over eight seconds, Yates was an easy second, Ditto for DuHamel in third place, "We picked the wrong rear tire," DuHamel's crew chief AI Luddington said. "We went a little softer than we should have, Other than that, he [DuHamel] thought the setup was really good, never mind that we didn't have any practice time, Once his tire went off and he lost touch in traffic, he was like, 'I don't want to work that hard.' That's all there was to it. For the second race we were going to make some really small preload changes and try a medium tire and let it go at that." DuHamel wouldn't get the chance to try the different setup, as he suffered his collarbone injury in the 600cc Supersport final. Eric Bostrom also had a relatively lonely ride to fourth place, His brother Ben would fill the top five after Pridmore's misfortune. "We had the wrong tire," Eric Bostrom said, "Everyone but the Suzukis, because they had more track time, picked the same tire. Miguel [DuHamel] did a pretty outstanding job, Our bike is just not stock riders will be implemented at the fourth round of the AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship, with the groups segregated by practice times rather than even or odd numbers, a senior AMA official confirmed at lnfineon Raceway. "We're going to try it at Pike's Peak (International Raceway)," Kerry Graeber, the AMA's vice president. director of communications said. ""It'll be based on points rather than even-odd." Graeber said the thinking was that there was such disparity among the riders that they were going to try to group the riders of equal speed together. "We'll assess how it works. See what the riders think," he added. The issue came to light again during Superbike qualifying for this year's Daytona 200. Daytona is the only track where the premier class has even-odd qualifying, and the difference between the factory machinery and the slowest privateers creates hazardous conditions for both. The Superbike class may adopt the system in 2004, if it proves successful in the support classes. ""We haven't made that decision yet." Graeber said. "We'll see how it works." The revised Infineon Raceway wasn't universally lauded. Yamaha's Damon Buckmaster was one of the riders who felt the change to the nnal corner was a mistake. "Personally I think tum 11's pretty stupid, really," he said. "We ought to use the tum 11, not the far one, but the one we used last year. That would open it up a little bit, and we could pass those lappers a little easier. There was a couple instances I neariy ran them. It's not good for me or them. I think we should be using the old turn 11 that we had last year." Later in the Formula Xtreme post-race press conference, Buckmaster made a point of revisiting the issue. "My comment on turn 11, I had the same opinion when we had that test

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