Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

and head-butting Fania in full view of not only those spectating at the second horseshoe but also the Speed Channel cameras. The incident marred an otherwise clean and injury-free Daytona 200, and the repercussions of the incident weren't known at press time (see In The Wind). Everyone else's woes left Mladin in the clear, the Australian able to cruise to the finish, clear of the battling Hondas behind him . His plan had worked to perfection, and he accomplished exactly what he 'd set out to do: start the defense of his t itle in the best possible manner. "W he n I came out [after the final pit stop] , I think I had a bit of time," Mladin explained. " I knew where we were and that sort of stuff. I knew that we were going to have a tire that was go ing to be about five laps less worn at the end, even if there was somebody with us . So everything went pretty well for us , and the three-stop strategy worked this year. It doesn't mean it's going to work next year, but it worked this year. My first stop wasn't the best. I was a little bit annoyed , actually, for the first few laps. The front wheel didn't quite work right . But the next two made up for it, for sure. We needed to have good stops. I needed to get into the pits fast, and I needed to get out really fast. And that's what we did . And that's what gave us those extra few seconds at the end." Zemke ended up second, an impressive Daytona 200 debut for the Paso Robles, California, resident. Zemke's only hiccup was at the start of the race, the bike bogging 0(( the line and allowing the lead group to leave him behind, albeit on ly for the first I0 laps. By that time, Zemke had clawed his way back to the fast draft, working his tires hard in the process. His fast run forced him to pit for rubber a tad earlier than he 'd planned (o n lap 17 compared to Duhamel's coming in on lap 20), but he still managed to st ick to his two-stop plan . It just meant his run to the nag was on really worn tires, and it was a heroic run , w ith Zemke fighting huge slides on the tri-oval to hold off the veteran Duhamel on the final lap . "Seco nd place here is awesome," an elated Zemke said . "It 's an awesome way to start 0(( the season, and an awesome way to start 0(( my year, for sure. I'm real happy to be up here, and like I said up on the podium, I've got to thank Miguel [Duhamel] for showing me how to ride the 200. From right after the first stop, we got hooked up together, and we were together for the whole race after that. I just bided my time behind him . For a while, during the middle stint, we had to just kind of hook up together and push a little bit to catch up . We caught up to Aaron [Yates], and then that's when Mat [Mladin] and Eric [Bostrom] both came by us . I don't really have a whole lot to say. It was a long race. "Off the start, I had a little bit of a problem with my clutch. Luckily, those guys weren't setting a blistering pace up front, and I was able to claw back, but in doing so , I just ruined my tire. I actually had to stop... I think it was two or three laps early, coming into the pits earl ier than what we had planned . So that made my middle stint really long . I actually extended that one even one lap lo nge r, because by hooking up with Miguel I was able to kind of sit back there, and we were still ab le to do good times, and I wasn't abusing my tires as bad. 50 that really helped out." Duhamel's race was steady, the fourtime winner leading four laps of the 200 and keeping himself in a position to win throughout. Like Zemke, the two-stop strategy left him without grip for too many laps, his lap times slowing to 1:5 Is , 52s , 53s and 54s in the laps proceeding his Briefly... According to a release issued by Dunlop on Sunday moming, all of the factory teams were planning on using what was the softest of the three rear tires available - at least to start the race . "We've worked closely with the teams to sort through several options," said Dunlop road racing manager Jim Allen in the release . "Each team is planning to start with the softest of the three rear tires available. They have performed well in practice and qualifying." Allen added that the teams have also opted to use the same front tire design, which is a medium compound. "We typicallytalk about soft, medium and hard compounds," said Allen. "But this label is only relevant to each track . So a soft tire at Daytona must still handle the g-force and heat generated on the banking here. It wou ld be considered to be very hard at any other track . We've built on our success at the latest tire test here in January. Daytona is not just about going fast, it's about going about fast and sustaining tire performance and tire integrity over many laps." Rick Shaw, the all-time mileage leader in the Daytona 200, failed to qualifyfor this year 's race . Had he qualified, Shaw would have broken the record for starts in the Mladin's crew goes to work on the GSX·Rl000. first stop and again dropping to high 5 Is and 52s just prior to his final stop. By the end of the race , both Duhamel and Zemke were circulating in the 52s and 53s, the last lap a I:54 as the pair was trying to bait each other into leading out of the chicane. By comparison , Mladin's pace was quick throughout, his best lap being a I:4 9.9 13, while his bad la ps were either high 52s or low 53s in the laps before pitting, his worst lap coming when he cruised to victory on the 57th lap, a 1:55 .830. Duhamel knew at the end th at he and his team had m iscalculated and that three stops may have given him a better shot at the wi n. "O ur strategy was obviously just to do two stops," Duhamel said . "We thought that maybe you couldn't make up the difference with three stops . That was a miscalculation . You could do it, but that's all right - we pushed hard. The Dunlop tires stayed on the bike great. At the end, obvious ly, like any Dunlop, they were a bit of a handful to handle. I tried to do the best that I could . It's kind of hard to push real ly hard my first four laps to try to make up a bit of a gap, knowing that I'm going to www.cycienEWs.com 200 with what would have been his 23rd Daytona 200. Shaw was visiblyupset at not making the field. "I thought I might have made it on the last lap, but we ran out of gas," Shaw said. "We just didn't have enough in it. We've played catch-up all week long, and I never got caught up. I've got no one to blame but myself. This is the hardest thing I've ever felt. This wou ld have set the record for starts in the Daytona 200, but we'll come back next year and get it. We still have the mileage record. Igot caught beh ind with the crash yesterday [Wednesday]. 1never could get back. Losing that session put me just that farther behind." With Shaw out of the race, Mike Sullivan became the oldest rider to start the 200 at 47 . One man who was happy with the work Dunlop had done prior to Daytona was Yamaha's Aaron Gobert, the winner of Thursday's Superstock race . "I ran a race simulation this moming, and I did 12 laps, and I said I cou ld go a little bit quicker, and that simulation was all high 50s, low 5 Is," Gobert explained. "I was thinking maybe mid-50s at the beginning, down to the 49s and back up to the 51s. I was thinking this is a bit too quick for this distance, but back where I was, the draft kept pullingme around, and there was less pushing air and less heat getting put into the tire . It was perfect. I didn't think the tires were going off, and then at the end they [the others in the lead pack] weren't braking late: they weren't gassing it early. A couple of times I came out of the chicane in fourth gear, and they still weren't pullingaway. I dropped 0(( a little bit and made some mistakes , and they still weren't gone. It was pretty incredible. Dunlop did their job. They promised all of us that it was going to be safe, and it was. They came up with the goods, and I'm pretty proud of them actually because it took a lot of work." CYCLE N EWS . MARCH 17,2004 19

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