Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship Rounds 8/10: Road America m Own Race - Race I m @@ 1] r-~lIIoI., aae-t (t", ...... ~_end" m® 1] 8a b_l32ldo ....... _ ......... Gobert _ fifth, ~ebltb..... .0 bwaa13th. was able to pass Roberts early on the DuHamel was second with Roberts 14th lap. The slide was deceiving. close by. Technology caught up to DuHamel "He made a little boo-boo in three, when he radioed his crew chief, AI and I got three really nice, and going Luddington, in turn three on the 15th down there on the brakes I wasn't lap. sure where Kurtis [Roberts] was, and I "I probably should've just turned braked a little bit early because I real- my head maybe," he said. "I went ly wanted to set the corner up and wide in turn three. When I did that, I give Miguel [DuHamel] a few bike- went really wide, and I screwed up lengths, so if I got a good drive, my drive." could drive up the back of him," The slight lapse in concentration I Mladin said. caused him to run wide in turn three On the white flag lap, DuHamel and allow Mladin to take advantage pulled alongside and drafted by into for the run down to turn five. turn one, Roberts right there in third. Mladin took the lead on the power Then Mladin retook the lead, passing in the run down to turn five on lap IS, on the brakes into turn five, DuHamel Unlike most of the band-aid fixes the riders have been forced to suffer this year in the name of safety, the one at Road American was nearly universally embraced. Tbe "bend" was added at the exit of the Carousel tum, a hard left, then right, shooting the riders down the back straight rather than sending them through the turn 11 kink at high speed, and with little run-off. The comer was a mirror image of the changes that the FIM had requested several years back, when Road America was interested in bosting a Grand Prix. It was designed by track president George Bruggenthies with help from McMahan & Associates, an engineering firm. "I think the new comer's great: Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin said. "It's taken out probably the most dangerous spot on this racetrack, which was that kink down there sur· rounded by that Armco. To me the new corner's great. I think it's opened up the possibility of a maybe a passing area down there, which is nice. And I think it was a good move to put that comer there for sure." . Bruggenthies was aware of the recent fixes of other tracks and the possibility of ruining his track. "They all liked turn 11; they just didn't like the consequences if they fell down there: Bruggenthies said. "It's a new tum, and we didn't want to create a chicane; we wanted to create a flowing tum." The engineer who helped Bruggenthies design and the draftsman who drew it are both racers, "and that's why I think it ended up working. Everyone understood the dynamics of a vehicle." Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts said, "The new comer is definitely safer. It's not too tight. At least you can kind of go in there, brake, stop. get the thing tumed and have time to tum it back. Like [Road) Atlanta's new thing's just horrible as far as I'm concerned. It seems okay. I used to like the kink. Of course, it was dangerous. It would be nice if we could have widened out the run-off room, but you've got to do what you've got to do." The final paving was done only two weeks prior to the race, but it didn't seem to matter. The riders were unanimous that the transition from the old track to the new both in trac· tion and smoothness, was unparalleled. Ducati Austin'S Anthony Gobert, th~ fast qualifier in the rain, also gave the bend a thumbs-up. "They've done a really good job with the track," Gobert said. "For the motorcycles now, it's way safer in the wet. I'm having so much fun out there. It's great. Sears Point [Infineon Raceway) and Road Atlanta ruined the race tracks by doing chicanes. Thankful· Iy, they've done a really good job and kept it safer and flowing' for us. So thanks to everyone involved." "To second what these guys said, normally when we hear a track's been chopped to bits, it's been ruined," Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore said. "I went over there yesterday, and I was shocked. They did a first-class job. They've made the track safer. They've added a passing spot. Some of the tracks we go to nowadays have gotten Mickey Mouse." 20 JUNE 18,2003· c: U Ben Bostrom 4th American Honda's Ben Bostrom led the first three laps before falling back to second, then third, then on the seventh lap to fourth, wbere he'd finish, struggling with rear tire traction. "I thought it was going to be good; after the first couple of laps, I thought this thing was gOing to be good. Then we started losing grip, losing grip and [Mat] M1adin passed me. He went a little bit sl?wer. Then he was able to really gas it up, and I tried to gas it up, and I I~st traction" and It broke awa~ a little bit, and I started riding a little bit over my head, and I Just couldn t make any time. Part of the problem could be traced to his speed. Bostrom went 1.6 seconds quicker in the race than he had in qualifying. "Normally, this would be Saturday afternoon's practice session; instead it's the race. If we raced tomorrow, I'd be a lot better off, because I'd have been qualifying right now and doing mid-15s and finding more gnp. But because of the double race thing and the rain we lost a session." c: I e newvs Anthony Gobert m cB® Jason Pridmore 5th Ducati Austin's Anthony Gobert was one of the few who were hoping for rain. It didn't happen. Instead he had to struggle to keep up with the front·runners while at a power disadvantage, he said. "I kind of felt that I was down on power a lot. It doesn't really stand out at the other tracks where we kind of struggled a lot with setup. When we got here, we saw it straight away. I've been riding as hard as I can, and we're just two, three seconds a lap slower than Mat [Mladin). It's like clearly an example when we're that much slower that the bike's down on horsepower a bit. At least the setup's better and the bike's working, and I'm feeling better about that. The guys worked hard on that. I'm pretty happy." 6th For the third race in a row. Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore finished sixth. He'd run up in fifth on the second lap, then settled into a battle with Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom who was trailing Ducati Austin's Anthony Gobert. Pridmore said he developed a chatter ~round the seventh lap while still on Gobert and Bostrom. "It looked like Eric [Bostrom) and 1were having the same kind of problems. He was running wide in a couple of places; I was running wide a couple places. A lap after Eric [Bostrom] got by me (on the sixth lap), I started notiang this chatter. At that point I was like, 'Well, we've got to soldier on.' Those guys could Just keep that pace up to where they were pulling me a little bit." m II cB 1] Shawn Higbee m @1] 1] Jordan Szoke 7th Shawn Higbee didn't have to come far to earn his best Superbike finish of the year, seventh place. An employee of Buell, the Millennium Technologies/Kaufmann Trailers/KWS Motorsports rider, the Big Bend, Wisconsinite, was in ninth place on the second lap when he ran off the track in the new section, dropping back to 14th. From there to the end he picked his way forward, ending up an untouchable seventh. "I made a mistake going into that new section, the left-hander. I was braking really late, and the front end started tucking, and I was heading for the dirt, and then I saw that escape route, the old section, so I stood it up and rode it through there." Then the race began. The team's Suzuki GSXRl000 had a new rear link that Higbee hadn't totally dialed in, but even at 75 percent it was better than the stock link. What was missing was top speed. "We got a really good pull off the corners. The guys are going to try to reconfigure the cam timing or try different Intake stacks to get us more top end. We could stay in the draft if I was trying really hard." Higbee re'!'ains the top privateer in seventh place, just behind American Honda's Miguel DuHamel In the POint standings and In front of Dream Team Ducati's Larry Pegram. 8th The weekend progressed better for Corona Extra EBSCO Media Suzuki's Jordan Szoke than it started. The Canadian crashed on Friday morning, damaging his ribs and back and confining him to the pits for the rest of the day. In Saturday qualifying he couldn't do more than two laps at a time, ending up on the fifth row. "In the race, I just put my head down and grunted through the pain: Szoke said. "I knew I had a fast motorcycle. My tuner, Scott Miller of Fast Company, built awesome motors. I knew that if they passed me in the comers. I could be patient and pass them on the straightaway. In the left-handers - I couldn't get my knees down in the left-handers. But we went three seconds a lap quicker in the race." For a ~hile. With four laps to go he felt a vibration that he first thought was the clutch, then the tire, then the crank. "It ended up being the tire. It was eight inches by six inches of the tire; a chunk of the tire was gone. Dunlop said it was a freak thing. It was just something that happened, and fortunately enough I didn't crash; I didn't blow up, I only lost one position. Considering how much pain I was in, I'm extremely happy." m®f!d, Eric Bostrom 13th A week after his first AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike win of the year, at Pikes Peak International Raceway, Eric Bostrom was out of sorts. He ran fifth, at the end of the lead pack, for the first lap then started slipping behind, settling into sixth, then seventh behind Anthony Gobert on the seventh iap until the 14th, when he pitted, frantically pointing toward his gas tank. The display suggested he was out of gas, but that wasn't the case. "Every time I got on the throttle, it would miss real bad. So I came into the pits, but it ~idn't help. So I'm thinking it was running out of gas." Bostrom re-joined the race in 11 tho But that wasn't my problem. My prOblem was I had no heat in the left side of my tire. I don't know why. I wasn't very fast even when I got going. So we got a lot of work to do. I just hope it rains tomorrow, just evens it out."

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