Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Series Round S; Pikes Peak International Raceway my Own Race ill 11 @@ Ben Bostrom 4th Ben Bostrom made a myriad of changes to his RC-51 over the course of the weekend. In the end. he ended up coming out on the losing end of it battle for third with Aaron Yates. "The tire we had to run, I didn't like," Bostrom said. "I made a little change to the bike, and maybe it was the wrong way to go, but regardless - I learned more this weekend than anywhere. We learned a lot in Atlanta, and we learned ever more here. We're coming up on the halfway point in the season, so it's time to make it happen. We threw so many things at it here. It's great that the track is so smail because you do five laps, 10 laps, whatever, come in, and you still have 55 minutes of the session left. I've never changed so many things on a bike in such a sbort time." As for the race itself, "I was racing with those Suzukis, and I didn't want to," Bostrom said. "Yates rode well and was very conservative with tbe tire. Tbere was a bit more blue smoke off Mat's [Mladin] tire than Yates'. Yates had a bit more control on the throttle, but Mat rode really well, too. He was really running it in on the front tire, and I thought be would make the tire last. At the end, Yates was tbe one who made it last, and he ran the tire I wanted to run. Yates rode really well, and I can't take anything away from bim." ill 11 ® Anthony Gobert From there he shadowed him to the finish. Fast-starter Gobert held on to finish fifth, the Australian getting better every weekend with his new Ducati Austin team. As is now the norm, Gobert led at the start and then went backward before starting to come forward again as the race wore on. Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore continued to turn his season around at Pikes Peak. The road-racing instructor stuck with Gobert for most of the race before finally ending up some eight seconds behind him. Pridmore, in turn, was about five seconds in front of American Honda's Miguel DuHamel, another who had chosen the softer Dunlop rear tire. Corona Extra Suzuki's Jordan Szoke, Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin and Valvoline EMGO Suzuki's Steve Rapp rounded out the top 10 finishers. Mladin ninth? Strange, but true. The Australian had a tough weekend at Pikes Peak. First he thought he'd earned pole position. Then he found out it had been taken away. In the race, he held third for a majority of the 40 laps before giving way to both Yates and Ben Bostrom, then he had a tire-wear problem that forced him to pit for new rubber. Add all that together and you get ninth place. "Same as Daytona, you know," Mladin said. "I'm not sure [if he was too hard on it]. It's one of those things. If you watch and see what's going on, I don't think I'm as sideways as some other people. Honestly, at the moment, we can't figure out why we're wearing tires out. I'm not IOO-percent sure what Aaron [Yates] used. We seem to be loading the rear tires up more than him, and I can only compare with my teammate because we're on the same bike, which in turn on most racetracks means better lap times and good performance, but on these bowls we're really struggling. Fortunately, there's no more bowls. It's like I said earlier in the weekend, you don't always get 12 JUNE 1 1, 2003' cue I e Roberts' runner-up finish, his best run of the year, came as a result of careful tire management. Roberts is currently tied with Ben Bostrom for fourth in the series standings. the results at these little racetracks that think you're capable of, and that happened again this weekend. But that's the way it goes. The pace was low 55s, so that's not exactly fast. The gap was staying pretty much the same, and I was trying to baby the tire as much as possible. It's just these bowl tracks. On the other tracks it's not a problem. They called me in. I should have come in earlier because the tire was on the cords, and I was down to the 56s by then, and everyone was catching me up. In hindsight, we would have pitted on lap 25, but hindsight is 20/20." Mladin's problems, Eric Bostrom's win, and the late consistency of Ben Bostrom, Roberts and Yates have turned this year's championship into one to remember just two rounds after what had seemed as though it might turn into a Mladin rout. How's this for close? Just 23 points separate the top five in the title chase. Yates continues to lead with 244 points, just five better than Eric Bostrom and nine better than Mladin. Roberts and Ben Bostrom, meanwhile, are tied for fifth place with 221 points. No one is out of it yet as the season gets into its heating up period. eN Pikes Peak International Raceway Fountain, Colorado Results; June I, 2003 SOPERBIKE QUALIFYING: I. Aaron Yates (54.079); 2. Mat Mladln (54.087); 3. Anthony Gobert (54.166); 4. Kurtis Roberts (54.214): 5. Eric Bostrom (54.690); 6. Ben Bostrom (54.814); 7. Miguel DuHamel (55.015): 8. Larry Pegram (55.146): 9. Jason Pridmore (55.332); 10. Jordan Szoke (55.437); II. Josh Hayes (55.542); 12. Pascal Picotte (55.704); 13. Michael Barnes (55.741); 14. Daniel Turner (55.884); 15. Steve Rapp (56.161); 16. J.Tlgert (56.259); 17. Shawn Higbee (56.284); 18. Ricky Orlando (56.308): 19. Geoff May (56.316); 20. Jimmy Moore (56.713): 2'1. Mike Ciccotto (56.726); 22. Jacob Holden (56.814); 23. Vincent Haskovec (56.942); 24. Mike Sullivan (56.958); 25. Jack Prefer (57.008): 26. Chris Caylo, (57.055); 27. Tom Wertman (57.259); 28. Dean Mi,dal (57.472): 29. John Haner (57.660); 30. Brian Stokes (57.674); 31. J.J. Roetlin (57.706); 32. Scott Jensen (57.997): 33. Ch,is Uleich (58."113); 34. G.Glennle (58.616); 35. Sean Fey (58.773); 36. Jason Knupp (58.812); 37. Eric Haugo (58.833): 38. Kevin Hanson (59.424); 39. Jeff Johnson (59.580); 40. Michael ne""s 5th ill~® Jason Pridmore 6th ill 11 {] Miguel DuHamel ill§611 Pascal Picotte Ducati Austin's Anthony Gobert was always near the top of the time sheets throughout practice and qualifying as he continues to move forward in his first year with the team. "I'm happy because of the circumstances," Gobert said. "We went back to the old forks at Atlanta because we struggled with the cartridge ones up until then. At Daytona we had the old ones and ran at the front. At Atlanta, we struggled a bit there, but mainly here we seem to be a lot better. We're definitely a lot doser now, and we're in with the top few in all the practices. In the race, I realized a couple of things we have to do to make it better. I've always done good at Road America, so I'm looking forward to next week. I got the starts dialed in. If we can get it just a little better, I think we can stay at the front. I just don't have the confidence in the early laps to stick it in like I want to. And that allows me to get carved up on the brakes, and normally I'm a really strong braker. It's kinda putting me off my game a bit. But we definiteiy have direction for next week." Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore ieft Colorado with a smile on his face as his season continues to turn for the better. "We've been making changes the whole weekend, which is great because we rode the bike ail weekend and didn't have any problems," Pridmore said. "We made a lot of offset changes, and we tried a different Unk here.. And aU those things we did made the bike bette;. So now I'm going to Road America confident. I think we can finish top five in Superbike in a few of these races, and with the amount of budget we're spending compared to a lot of teams, I think that would be pretty good. About two or three laps before Anthony [Gobert] really started to pull away from me again, some of it was traffic and he was getting hosed, I started to get a really bad vibration, and I was hoping it wasn't my tire. I wasn't pulling in because I had five seconds on whoever was behind me. As it turns out, at the red \lag, I almost hit a guy at the red \lag because the guy just chopped the throttle, and I didn't see the red \lag. I put my foot on the rear brake, and there was nothing there. I got to tum three and used it, and the whole caliper just exploded off the back wheel, and it was just dangling along the ground and fmally fell off. So the vibration I was getting was something with the rear brake from about half distance, or just past half distance. I can't complain about my weekend." 7th American Honda's Miguel DuHamel was one of the few who opted for the softer version of the triple compound Dunlop. It was a gamble that DuHamel probably wouldn't repeat. "We picked a softer tire than I think anybody out there," DuHamel said. "For us it was a pretty big gamble. I tried to do what I needed to do to not chunk the tire, and I thought we would be there in the end and maybe be stronger in the end. I was dipping back into the 55s, and I would have maybe got Jason [Pridmore]. Who knows what would have happened in those last six laps. Those guys were running pretty hard, and maybe somebody would have chunked and I would have moved up three or four positions. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and I'd like to maybe run it harder next time and see if the tire would be fine, but I had no trouble. My shoulder was fine. It hurt a few times, but I'm fine. I'm a little disappointed because I think we had a better bike than we did. but we'll get 'em in Elkhart." 14th French Canadian Pascal Picotte came to Pikes with his own team, fresh off competing in the Canadian Superbike Championship. He was a bit disadvantaged here but made the most of it. "I'm running a stock RJ ," Picotte said. "Stock engine, stock suspension, stock wheels, 17-inch tire... what can you expect? I thought we would finish a little bit better, but we don't have any electronic shifter on the thing, and the transmission has a lot of travel, and it was just wearing me out. I had a cramp in my leg, and it wouldn't go away. Then the shock went a little bit, and I was really being careful with the tire. We just need some more seat time on it, and we definitely made some improvements on it."

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