Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

While Mladin made hay while the sun shone, Eric Bostrom was the rain master, winning on a wet track on Sunday. minutes and averaged 92.1 mph, straight and moved by on the inside though his 32.623 second margin of victory may have been the largest into turn one, taking Bostrom with him, Roberts and DuHamel in their tow, a Suzuki then three Hondas. By now Mladin was already hitting transmission troubles that would cut into his lead. Mladin said it happened coming onto the straight a couple of ever for an AMA Superbike race. RACE ONE Mladin and Roberts got a jump on the field, but it was Ben Bostrom leading brother Eric into turn one, with Roberts taking over second by turn six. Ben led across the stripe to end the first lap, with Mladin drafting alongside Roberts on the front straight and taking the spot on the brakes into turn one. Meanwhile, DuHamel dropped Eric Bostrom to fourth, soon to lose touch with the front four, falling two more spots on the second lap to end it in seventh behind Pridmore and Gobert. Eric Bostrom was suffering rear grip problems, but that wasn't the worst of his woes. Running in seventh on the 14th lap, he pitted with a misfire, rejoining the race to finish 11 tho By now it was the third lap, and the top four were well away, settling in for the long haul. On the third lap, Mladin pulled alongside Ben Bostrom on the front times and almost every lap out of turn seven, and out of the new turn. "So I was actually slipping the clutch, revving it like a motocross bike just to try to get through some gears. Sometimes I couldn't get it in," he said. Roberts used the first turn to pass Bostrom on the next lap, Bostrom holding on to third in front of DuHamel, with a gap to Gobert and Pridmore and Eric Bostrom, then Pegram. Roberts tried Mladin once on the fifth lap, pulling alongside on the run up to Canada Corner, the turn 12 right, but was unable to make the pass. DuHamel took third from Ben Bostrom on the seventh lap, taking Roberts into turn five to move into second. DuHamel was on the boil now, LImY Pegram (Ta) had his best finish of the season, ending up third in the rain on Sunday after losing out on second place to Aaron Yates (201. The complexion of the races could be seen in the qualifying sessions with only one of the four riders in the provisional wet session on Friday on the front row after the dry session ended on Saturday. If it was wet, Ducati Austin's Anthony Gobert would be the bet. In tbe dry, Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin dominated. What the mixed weather meant was that no one got the full time to test in the wet or dry, so the race would be a series of calculated guesses. The pole time came out of the dry session with Mladin the fastest and most consistent on the slightly altered Road America circuit, His one lap best was a 2:15.169, a new lap record given the new chicane out of the Carousel (see Briefly... ) and over half a second in front of teammate Aaron Yates. Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts and Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom filled out the front row. "The bike's working good," Mladin, who was the only rider consistently in the low to mid-ISs, said. "Hopefully, it'll stay dry because it works a lot better in the dry than it does in the rain," Mladin had problems with traffic and' tires, the latter more troubling than the former. It was the third meeting in a row where tires were an issue, and unlike last week at Pikes Peak International Raceway where he tempered his comments after wearing out his rear tire, he expressed his concern this week. "It s.eems every race for me could be a tire-trouble race," Mladin said. "Without beating around the bush, Dunlop are going to have to step up and start bringing some better tires, because at the moment most of the ones they've got here now I'm putting up with what I'm doing with them. They're going to need to bring something better over." Mladin and Yates both wondered why they didn't bring the thin gauge tires, which, Mladin explained, "run a bit-cooler because there's less rubber in the middle. This year they don't have them. There's a possibility that a lot of people are going to maybe have problems with the middle of the tire. It's not the edge of the tire that's a problem; it's just tbe middle. So when you're straight up and down." Dunlop's race division manager Dave. Watkins came over from the firm's headquarters in Birmingham, England, bringing new tires, specifically for Road America. He said there'd be a new generation of tires for the next race at Brainerd International Raceway in three weeks' time. "I think Mat [Mladinj is gun shy right now, and he has the right to be gun shy after the last two races," Dunlop's U.S. road race manager Jim Allen said. "We're certainly doing everything we can. Mat [Mladin) stands alone as far as putting the most work into the tires right now." As for not bringing the thin-gauge tires, Allen said, "We had another way to address that problem." Allen said they'd brought three new tires and that one had emerged as the consensus choice for the race. Yates had a few problems in practice that he blamed on his race team in the postqualifying press conference before later changing his view. "I was pretty hot after qualifying, and I said my crew guys kind of screwed up some things: he began. "In reality it was no one's fault. It's just some things didn't go just right in qualifying, and I'm trying change some pieces out, actually swapping out some front wheels and front-brake wear and had some tire dragging problems," Because of the front brake problems, Yates had to run the same tire the whole dry session, "and I was really pushing the front a lot in the last couple of laps when I was trying to go fast. So it wasn't such a good session for me. But I'm glad we got not the front row, and we'll see how it goes." Yates also discovered tbe team's tire gauge was inaccurate. He crashed in the wet on Friday with overinflated tires, but he didn't put it to the gauge. "I came in and took that tire gauge, went to Dunlop and checked it, on their thing it was like three pounds off. I'm not saying that's the reason I fell. That bothered me pretty good. I thought I could go probably pretty good in the rain. That kHled my confidence sort of." Erion Honda's Kurtis Roberts was third on the front row, the last rider in the 15s at 2: 15.825. Unlike his Suzuki rivals, Roberts wasn't haVing tire problems. His was more a function of not haVing been to Road America for two years and having only one dry session to releam it at speed. "The bike's working better than I'm probably riding it right now," Roberts said. "I haven't been here in two years. My depth perception and braking marks and everything. Every lap I'm trying to change them. In qualifying you get in there and you think you're in too hot, and the next thing you know you come to a stop before you get to the corner. The whole qualifying session that's all I was doing, was either overshooting it by a little too much or overbraking a little too much. I know we left quite a bit of time out there j fell. I think we'll be right to run with these two guys and hopefully make a good race out of it." Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom was at the end of the front row. Bostrom, arrived at Road America fresh off his win at Pikes Peak International Raceway. He'd struggled in qualifying at PPIR but came through in the race. Road America is less forgiVing, and a number of top riders bemoaned tbe lack of dry practice. "Mostly we've just been out trying to cut laps; trying to get a lot of laps around here is a tough job always because the lap times are so long," Bostrom said. "I basica'lly put in as many laps as I could today." turning a new lap record of 2:14.986 on the seventh lap, then trying Mladin DuHamel ran up the inside on the next lap and made an easy pass into on the inside into one, Mladin putting him off. Roberts held third with Bostrom fourth, now 1.5 seconds behind the leader and soon to lose turn one to start the 12th lap, Mladin almost out of their draft, 1.341 sec- the draft and settle into fourth, though with the leaders still in sight. The problem was a lack of rear tire grip onds behind the leader as they crossed the line, but he was not finished. Roberts got DuHamel on the inside of the traffic on their way into the new that got progressively worse. He finished 9.852 seconds behind the win- chicane, out of the Carousel. He kept the lead until the front straight, when ner. DuHamel drafted by for the lead; with Starting the 11 th lap, first DuHamel then Roberts drafted by Mladin, with Roberts making the pass at the last minute, just before tipping it into turn one. But Roberts wasn't done. Riding up the inside of more traffic slowing the leaders, Mladin able to close right up. With three laps to go Mladin was back with them, taking a look inside of Roberts ioto one, then sliding as he exited. His Yoshimura Suzuki GSXR 1000 seemed to be the machine with the most tire wear, though he DuHamel in turn five, he took the lead for the first time. cue I e n e _ S • JUNE 18, 2003 19

• Cover