Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

We've struggled getting to the end of Bostrom taking the lead again out of some races, the way we can start turn five for the run up the hill. "From there on it was kind of them. But things are coming better." Roberts wasn't making excuses for nerve wracking," Bostrom said as he his third. "The guys rode really well," he long race because the track kept get- said. "I think that just by looking at ting dry. I knew for the most part that quickly pulled away. "It was a real the race pace, we were definitely rid- because a lot of guys chose rain tires tires were great. I think the last lap was my fastest lap of the race for me. as welL" Bostrom's third lap was the fastest So they obViously hung in for me." Ben B D b ChI'l (155) ended up fourth and fifth over the two Up. Prtdmonl (43) _ sixth both Umes out, though he ran . . high . . second on SuncIa7. we should be pretty comfortable ing 105 percent the whole race. The of the race to that point, his 2:40.585 over two seconds faster than Gobert, the time contributing to his 2.384- Ben Bostrom was 9.852 seconds behind the leader and 16 in front of Ducati Austin's Anthony Gobert, who second gap ending the lap. Then the margin started to swell like a Wiscon- complained of being down on power. Next was Jason Pridmore, alone in sin heifer as the track dried and sixth with a slight frorit chatter prob- Bostrom sped up. Halfway in and it was over 23 seconds, then more, with lem. close by, Roberts waiting in the of his rear tire, "but I burned it up just wings. Out of the Carousel and enough to give me that breathing RACE TWO Mladin and DuHamel held a slight room that he got at the end, and he Gobert got the jump, followed by Eric Bostrom had chosen a two-year- edge with Roberts closing up in the was able to go out and do that really Bostrom and Pridmore, three of the old spec tire with a less aggressive new kink and DuHamel having a big fast lap there." four fastest riders in Friday's wet qualifying session, as a light drizzle tread pattern than the 2003 model that most of the others, including slide out of the kink, killing his drive. Even so, all three riders turned the the gap topping out at plus-38 on the 13th. There'd be more slides before the end best laps on the last lap of the race, began to fall out of gray skies on a Yates, Ben Bostrom and Kurtis of the lap, including exiting the final Mladin's the finest - a new record of mostly wet track. The rain wouldn't corner, turn 14, for the run up the hill 2:14.740. last, dismaying some, elating others, Roberts used. It was the same tire Pier-Francesco Chili had used to win to the finish line. DuHamel was hang- "I was just glad to have the motor- ing off the right side to get up on the cycle there at the end of the race to Then the top two were away - fat center part of the tire but came up be able to do that," Mladin said. "It's Bostrom taking the lead with ad_raft having less power and weight than .280 of a second short. something that we struggle with a lit- slingshot into turn one on the third the V -fours and twins, Bostrom was tle bit, trying to refine our new bike. lap, .Gobert taking it back, then able to set his suspension softer, not "It was still good," DuHamel said my Own Race - Race 2 m 7J 1] Miguel DuHamel 4th American Honda's Miguel DuHamel lives in Las Vegas and likes to bet. So at the start of the wet/dry race he gambled on a cut slick, while everyone else went with some iteration of rain tires. It nearly paid off, but not at first. "Not 500 yards off the start line it started raining. I said to AI [LuddingtonJ, 'It's raining here.' For a while it was pretty sad; I was pretty far back." As the track dried, DuHamel sped up, setting one fast lap after another for much of the second half. He ended the second lap in 21st but was into the top 10 on the 10th, then moved from seventh to fourth on the final lap. "It was a big risk," DuHamel said, even bigger because he couldn't see the cuts in the tire and thought the team had mounted full slicks. "The first few laps you look at the cut slicks, and it's not an intermediate. An intermediate I thought was going to be cut up more than what I got. So when I saw that, it really scared me. When I saw that and they showed me the front tire, I said, 'Holy cow, I thought it was a slick.' I took off, and it was really slippery. With all the patches here, if it wasn't for all the patches, I could have gone faster; I could have got podium. Some of these turns, I just couldn't even get myself to turn, those tar patches. Just in those corners I'd lose probably four seconds." m @@ 1] Ben Bostrom 5th American Honda's Ben Bostrom couldn't believe how lillie traction he had. "I've never had that little grip in the rain in my life. That's the worst I've ever, ever had it." The problem was tire choice, Bostrom convinced to go with the same rain tires that took Aaron Yates to second place. "Intermediates were the right choice. [I chose these] because someone said it was going to rain. Another storm's coming. That's the only reason. Otherwise I would have put on intermediates. We were real tempted to put on a little different rain tire, which is the one Eric [Bostrom] ran. It's not so cut up." Bostrom said he didn't chew up his rain tire because he "couldn't get enough grip to chew up the tire. The thing would sit on top and just spin. The best part for my tire is when it was half wet, half dry, and it'd hit those dry lines. Intermediate was the best tire. I would have picked that all day long if I had the chance to do it over again." m~® Jason Pridmore 6th "Another sixth," Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore said after his fourth sixth-place finish in a row. This one was more than just a sixth with Pridmore running in third, then second in the early going before gearing problems dropped him into the clutches of the pursuing pack. "I felt like I rode beller than sixth place today. My bike, we had it geared that we hit the rev limiter so early on the front straightaway that I had to back off, because I didn't want to blow up. I was on the rev limiter down the front straightaway. I think it was because of the diameter of the [rain] tire, and unfortunately, as we kept wearing more of the middle off, it kept hitting the rev limiter earlier. So that was a bit frustrating. I'm happy. We're getting closer. I know today was a conditions race. but to be able to run second was kind of cool." m 1] cD 1] Shawn Higbee 7th Team owner Kevin Hunt had put a new rear shock link on Higbee's Millennium Kaufman Suzuki this weekend, and it was an immediate improvement in the dry. In the wet, the old one was beller, and that's what Higbee used fo race to seventh for the second day in a row. "It's kind of ironic because the setup we've been struggling with all year is the stock rear link, and it just so happens that in the wet that stock link with the softer initial rate, it really allowed the bike to transfer the weight back and drive off the corners. So we had a very, very good setup for the wet. I was ahead of [MatI Mladin for the first time this year, and I was like, 'Yeah, this is going to be a good race.''' Higbee said that the Dunlop rain tires were "phenomenal. I've never ridden a rain setup like that, and it was so predictable I could really feel the grip level, and I felt confident about throwing it in there, braking, driving, everything. Once a dry line depending on their tire choice. his last wet race in Austria over two years ago. With the Kawasaki ZX-7R started developing, our setup was going away. I did my best to keep the tires cool, finding wet lines and going off the main line a little bit. I probably it's hard to predict the future; you didn't know how dry it was going to get, but if I knew it was going to be dry, I probably wouldn't have ridden so aggressively in the beginning and middle of the race." m®cD Michael Barnes m®@ Kurtis Roberts m®@ Mat Mladin 8th Michael Barnes stood over his Prieto Racing Suzuki GSX-R1000, pojnting to a severely shagged rear rain tire. The center and right parts of the tread were gone, the right heavily frayed. "This was the softer of the two [Pirelli rain tires]," Barnes said. "I kind of wish I had gone with the other one. With limited wheels we had mounted this rain, which is the softer of the two, and an intermediate and my third wheel is bent. This is a 17 for the rains because they don't have a 16.5inch rains. I was just really hoping it was going to stay a downpour because I would have been up there with [Larry] Pegram. I truly believe it after the wet qualifying we had when I was all over [Aaron] Yates and Pegram." It was the second hit of bad luck in two days. On Friday, a minor mechanical put Barnes out early. "We had a just a little knuckle break on the shift linkage, this pressed rivet," he said, pointing the bulge at the end of the shift shaft. 9th Tires decided Roberts' race early, earlier than most. When he tried one of the 2003-spec Dunlop race tires, it was cold, so he didn't get a fair test. Thinking it might work, he went with it instead of the two-year-old pattern that Eric Bostrom used to storm away. "With the weather, I didn't want to go with a gamble on tire choice. I had to go with what Mat [Miadin] and Aaron [YatesJ are running because we all three are close enough [in the title chase]. I would have gone with the gamble, and who knows, I could have fallen off. We made it through and got a point or so back, not as much as we'd like for the day. The way the thing was working, we did everything we could." 10th "I screwed up," MJadin admitted straight away. "I was indecisive. I said to Pete [Doyle, his crew chief] before the start of the race, when we came back in after two laps, if I knew it wasn't going to rain, I'd put intermediates in right now. It looked really gray. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure. So I went with the wets, because it was drizzling. It was drizzling a little bit. Not much, but a little bit. I made a bad choice. 1made it based on the color of the sky. Honestly, the bottom line is we made a bit of a drastic setting with our bike for the rain to get a bit more feel, and I just couldn't get any feel with the tires, so I was going backward." Mladin pitted at the end of the eighth lap, going from 12th at the end of the seventh lap to 29th, and last at the end of the eighth. But the intermediates he fitted energized him, and he set the fastest lap of the race by 1.5 seconds on the final tour, by which time he'd moved up to 10th. Mladin said he probably should have come in a few laps sooner to change tires. "The bottom line is we came in trailing by 10, now we're trailing by one, so it wasn't bad for the conditions." cue I e n e _ s JUNE 18,200321

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