Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Championship Round 1 1 : Brainerd International Raceway Aaron Yates ends a Suzuki drought at Brainerd By HENNY RAY ABRAMS PHOTOS BY BRIAN J. NELSON BRAINERD, MN, JUNE 29 oshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates gave Suzuki its first Superbike victory in the 18-year history of AMA racing at Brainerd International Raceway. But the Suzuki team wasn't as ecstatic as it might have been, not after Mat Mladin had yet another rear tire failure; the fourth by his count, this one forcing a pit stop that dropped him from second to seventh and from a tie for first in the championship to second behind Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom. "I'm obviously not happy," said Mladin, who'd led 10 of the first 11 laps after starting from the pole. "We tried really hard to get the bike suited to the track and felt that we had come up with a pretty good package." Knowing the demands of Brainerd, where the tire spends long amounts of time on its right side at high speed, Dunlop's road race manager Jim Allen took extra precautions to prevent such a failure. He'd hand shaved the center tread off the race tire that emerged as the best in a bid to reduce heat related failures. "I think it's fair to say he's clearly the fastest rider on the racetrack when he's out there," Allen said. "The long and the short of it is, we haven't done a good job of keeping him out there all year." Yates was almost as strong as Y 8 JULY 9, 2003' cue I e Mladin, he and his teammate leaving the pack behind to make the race their own by the third of 21 laps. When Mladin pitted on the 13th lap, Yates had a 5.913-second lead that he expanded for a while then backed off on the final lap to win by 2.714 seconds, and that despite a rear tire vibration that set in after he'd spun his tire 180 degrees on the rim. "Mat [Mladin] is always tough to beat," Yates said. "I knew he was going to be the man to beat. He's been going really good ever since the very first practice session." With Mladin gone, the pursuit came from the Hondas of Miguel DuHamel and Kurtis Roberts, but at a distance. Once the pair broke away, first from n e _ s Eric then Ben Bostrom, the race for second was between them. DuHamel was the more aggressive, too much so, he and Roberts both felt, but it earned him the runner-up spot. "We talked a little bit afterward, and he said I really pinched him off on the track," DuHamel said after beating Roberts to the stripe by .126 of a second. "I was sliding coming out of there, and I might have miscalculated it. I just don't like doing stuff like that, pinching someone off." Roberts wasn't content to fight DuHamel; he wanted to fight for the win. "The bike's working well enough; we need to work a lot better, it seems like, to keep up with the Suzukis right now," he said. Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom finished fourth with an ill-handling ZX-7R, taking the spot back after Ben Bostrom chunked a rear tire on his American Honda RC51. "My bike's been really, really good on tires," Ben Bostrom said. "That's why that was such a shock what happened today." After Ben pitted for a new tire, he went back out and finished 12th. Giovanni Bussei, Anthony Gobert's replacement on the Ducati Austin team, was fifth in his first AMA appearance. It took him a while to get going, and he chose a harder tire than most, but overall he was happy with his AMA debut. "I think if I could stay with them the first lap, afterwards I could stay with them, maybe stay just behind," Bussei said. "Instead I was riding all by myself." Attack Suzuki's Jason Pridmore was sixth for the fifth race in a row, this time on his "A" bike after a season spent on his back-up. Then came Mladin, 18 seconds back after passing Corona Extra EBSCO Media Suzuki's Jordan Szoke and Millennium Kaufmann Suzuki's Shawn Higbee with a few laps to go. Szoke was eighth, Higbee ninth and Hooters Suzuki's Vincent Haskovec 10th. Those three, along with Prieto Racing's Michael Barnes, had been together for much of the race. Yates' win vaulted him closer to the top of the championship standings. Eric Bostrom still leads with 321, three ahead of Mladin, with Yates third at 313 with seven rounds remaining. , He also broke DuHamel's threeyear-old race record by completing the 21-lap, 63-mile race in 34 minutes, 5.190 seconds at an average speed of 110.9 mph. DuHamel's record had been 110.421 mph. Off the start it was Mladin and Yates, the pair pulling over two seconds on third place by the third lap, the powerful Suzuki GSX-R 1ODDs clearly the class of the field on the high-speed three-mile circuit. Back and forth they went, the pace not particularly fast as Yates took the lead on the fourth lap, then MJadjn took it back until the 12th, when Yates came by in traffic. He was being shadowed by Mladin when the Australian's tire failed. "I looked over the other shoulder and didn't see him," Yates said. He saw a plus five on a pit board, which he assumed was Mladin's. The next time by he realized it was his, and the lead was now 6.3 seconds. "Next lap around I got a good look at my board, and it was mine, so I figured he had some troubles or something," Yates said. "I went through the infield pretty good out there, and I rndn't know if something happened to him or what." That wasn't his problem. He'd picked up a tire vibration much earlier, and up the front straight it got worst every lap. "Towards the end that vibration seemed to get worse and worse, and I was easing up a little on it," Yates said. "On the front straight it was so fast, I didn't really want nothing to happen, and I was still trying to go as hard as I could through the infield to keep my lap times good." His lap times slowed slightly, but he still had plenty in reserve when Bobby Lemming threw the checkered flag. - The race had been for second for some time, DuHamel against Roberts. DuHamel also had a tire problem, a vibration caused by spinning on the rim, but it didn't slow him down. Like Yates and Mladin, they took turns leading each other, only their duel

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