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put my Honda/Factory Connection/ No Fear/Lee Dungaree Jeans 450 on the top. You've got to take your hat off to Ricky, that was one hell of a streak. I'm just glad I was the one to put it to an end." An early second-moto fall relegated Windham to an eventual sixthplace finish and fourth overall, while Carmichael began a new streak, winning the second moto to lock up the overall. "Jeremy and I have 89 wins now, and he's the all-time winning rider," Carmichael said. "As of now, he's the best - along with me. Neither one of us are better than each other, so to beat his record would be great. But the important thing is to try to do your best and try to win races, and the other stuff comes along with that. It feels good. I'm looking forward to getting back East with these guys and doing some racing. The weather will be hotter, and we'll see what happens." Windham led the charge out of the first turn, with Larry Ward, Nick Wey, Damien Plotts, Sean Hamblin and Ezra Lusk following close behind. Carmichael sat 10th in the second corner, and Windham pulled away right away. He had almost three seconds in hand after just a half-lap. "I feel great on the starts all the time," Windham said. "Randy from Michelin came out to my house, and we've been practicing starts, and everybody knows that 450's a starting machine anyway, but I think my skills were good anyway, and the bike just makes it that much better." Hamblin moved into third right away and began working on Ward in second. By the end of the first lap, Carmichael was already fifth, and he didn't want to let Windham get away - and for good reason. By the end of the second lap, Windham led by nearly 10 seconds - 9.65 seconds, to be exact. Carmichael got by Hamblin for third about halfway through the lap and then made short work of MotoXXX's Ward. Once he was in second by the end of the third lap, though, Windham already had over 12 seconds on him. ·Once he got away, I knew," Carmichael said. "Once we got to lap three, I said, 'Unless he falls, he's got it.' Racing with Kevin in '97, I learned that. I tell you, the guy's really dangerous when he gets a good start, you know, and if none of us three [Carmichael, Reed and Ferry] are up there, he's gonna say, 'See ya later.' He's just going to check out. Halfway through the moto, I was just thinking, 'All right, I've just got to win the second moto and do the OA.'" SoBe Suzuki's Hamblin had a good ride going in third, but he eventually faded back to seventh. Reed ran fourth for a while, but his teammate Ferry caught him and made the pass on the fourth go-around, then Ferry made short work of Hamblin - this despite not training due to Ferry's Epstein-Barr disease. "Yeah, I haven't been doing any [training]," Ferry said. "I've just been riding a couple of days during the week, and that's it. That's all I can really do right now without wearing myself out." Throughout the next nine laps or so, Windham just kept stretching his lead, topping it out at over 16 seconds - and looking almost slow as he did it. Carmichael's 30-moto streak was as good as over. "I knew that Kevin would get a good start like that, and he checked out, and I knew I wasn't going to catch him," Carmichael said. "Plus, he was faster than I was, so he deserved to win. He was putting in really good laps, like when I got into second, he was still pulling and pulling and pulling. I'm like, 'Man!' But as far as the streak goes, it's no big deal. That was last year, and that's an old chapter, so I'm just going to move onto something new. There's new guys, and you approach it a little different now. As far as the streak goes, I wasn't really worried about that. "He was reeling off some good laps, and I definitely couldn't catch him until the end of the moto," Carmichael said from the podium. "It's going to take a better start. It's good, no complaints here, I'm riding good. Kevin's just riding better." Windham cruised on to take the win by almost eight seconds over Carmichael, and Timmy Ferry rode well for third. Then came strong rides from Reed and especially Mike LaRocco, who was way behind off the start. "I whee lied, and when I dropped the front end down, me and Tortelli collided, so I started way back which is what I had done the first two races," LaRocco said, "so I didn't really want to do that again, but I'm cucle starting to feel better riding." Moto two started much like the first one did, with Windham this time leading Reed, Ferry, Nathan Ramsey and Carmichael through the first turn. Reed charged at Windham right away and made the pass before the completion of the first lap, only for Windham to come right back by as Carmichael moved into third although Windham's lead was shortlived. "I've been doing that [getting holeshots] all year long so far," Windham said. "Everything went fine. I just made an aggressive pass for the lead, and it wound up it just happened to be in a corner that's really slick, and I slid out. They watered it pretty heavily between the 125 and 250 motos. I had made the pass on Reed and kind of slid out in the corner on top of the uphill." Windham got up 11 th while Carmichael worked on Reed for the lead. Then Windham went down again in front of the mechanics' area n e _ os • MAY 28, 2003 19