Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128323
1 - Round 4/5 AMA SUPERBIKE May 1 -2, 2004 AM A Chevrolet S uper blke Cha mpionship T his one loo ked to be the opposite o f Saturday's ra ther du ll race, t he top Superbike men in t he country all run ning nose to tail. O n the fourt h lap, Zemke made a bo ld move in turn seven, goi ng from third to first on the brakes and holding his line well enough to maintain the lead on the exit. Th ings stayed t he same fo r the most part wit h t he top th ree - Zemke, Duhame l and Mladin - putting a ga p on t he rest but se parated first to th ird by just over a second on the 15th lap . A lap late r and Eric Bo stro m was out, the D ucat i rider crashing on the exit o f turn two. On the 20th lap, Mladin had some troubles w ith a lapper in the chica ne and went off the track, putting him out of the race for the lead and back in the clutches o f Yates . By the end of the 22nd lap, Mladin was over six seconds be hind the lead duo, and Yates was all over his rear was over. O r so we t ho ught. And so th ought Zemke. Then, with t he television cameras focu sing o n the battl e be twee n Mladin an d Yates that would ult imately go to Yates, D uhamel came from nowhere, sliding up th e inside of Zemke in the final corner to take t he win . "To tell you t he honest truth, I was complete ly su rprise d ," Zemke said . " I'd came across, and I'd built up a little bit o f a lead . I had a little over two seconds o n him . In the laps prior, even when I caught some traffic and slowed down about a second an d went into the 39s, eve n when I knew the re wasn't anybody beh ind me and Miguel [Duhamel] had a clear track, the gap was staying the same. I really d idn't t h ink that he was going to be coming tire . on t he brakes or on the throttle, just rolling through t he corner, I was starting to lose both ends, and that was pretty early on - lap eight or 10. From then on, I knew it was going to be a battle just to stay on the po dium . I knew that I had chosen a soft t ire, and it was hard to say because we hadn't had temperatures this hot all week. It was a gamble, and I knew t hat going in, so I'm hap py w ith my resu lts . It could have been w o rse. De finitely tomo rr ow we'll change ou r strategy and hope for something a littl e bit be tt e r. I pretty m uch cooked bo th my tires. So leave it up to the roo kie to do that. We'll see if we can't fix that for On the 23rd la p, Zemke was ultraaggressive in traffic, and it paid off as Duhamel was balked. The lead at t he end of 24 laps was up to 1.5 seconds, and it would continue to grow. Afte r 25 of 27 laps , Zemke was clear, leading Duha mel by 2.5 seconds. Going into the final lap, the marg in was 1.9 seconds, and this thi ng tomorrow." RACE TWO It's ca lled striking w hile the iro n is hot. Whe n Mladin is having a to ugh day, you 'd be tte r ta ke advantage of it . Two of th e Hon da boys did . Race two started w ith Mladin st ruggling, his GSX-R I000 re fusing to run clea nly dow n low. Afte r first it was natu ral to t hink that he was holding bac k, but wh e n after e ight laps he was 8.2 seconds behind Zemke , w ho in turn had 2.6 seconds on D uhamel, it was ob vious that t his was no waiti ng game . Then came a repriev e for Mlad in in t he fo rm of a red flag. W ith t he team not certain what t he problem w as , t hey went to w o rk changing anything t he y cou ld in th e short amount of t ime they had before t he ra ce was restarted. Wh e n t he lights t urned green for a second t ime , it was Duhamel an d Ben Bos tro m lead ing t he w ay, w ith Yates quickly moving around Bost ro m to take seco nd in t he chica ne . Zemke was fourt h bu t w oul d take t hird a lap late r with a pass on Be n Bost rom. Ditto for Mlad in, the Australi an o utb ra king Bost ro m at t he chican e o n t he second lap . 38 MAY 12,2004 • CYCLE NEWS Doe!!! It Again Almost everyon e at the top of the Superb ike field picked up the pace from Fridayafternoon's first qualifying session. Everyone that is with the notable exce ptio n of Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin. He didn't have to , the Australian's Friday time qulck enough to earn him the 3Sth pole position of his AMASuperb ike career and the second of this young season . Mladin best from Friday a record lap of I:36.917 on the newly 's , resurfaced Infineon Raceway, put him on pole for the two Superbike Nation als and also earned him an additional championship point, the single point givinghim a 25-point lead over Jake Zemke heading into the first of two races. Go fast on Friday, and you have more time to work on race setup on Saturday. No one seems to practice that more than Mladin. "We obviously just had a few things to sort out in that session with our race stuff, but we came across a couple of tires that we're really, really happy with," Mladinsaid. "They're not the tires that we probably would have liked to use, but a set of tires that we hadn't used yet , so we're pretty happy about that . lap times on those tires were pretty decent. We're looking forward to the race . It's pretty hot , and it will get greasy like it always does around here. But we 've been there and done it before, so we 're really just looking forward to this afternoon." Mladin'steammate Aaron Yates ended up second, improving almost a second over his best from Friday, the Georg ian lapping at I:37.266 to lead Saturday's session. Yates may have had a better lap, but a slower rider balked him in the final comer on his flyer with a qualifying tire fitted . It was a solid effort by the rider coming off his one-round suspension for the on-track incident at Daytona. "First of all it just feels good to be back out on the racetrack, getting to ride my Yoshimura Suzukis,' Yates said. "I just went out there and pushed hard and tr ied to go fast, and that's a feeling you can't get anywhere else. We started out with some tires that we were 40t h Anniversa ry kind of testing for a race tire. They stayed decent for a couple of laps, but the rear drop ped off real fast. That's probably not going to be an idea l tire for the race. We also tr ied a shock that didn't seem to work so well. We changed all that and changed the tire, and the bike felt pretty comfortable. We got some qualifiers in, and the thing stuck pretty good for one lap, and I was able to get half a second ." Third on the grid was taken by Erion Racing's Jake Zemke, the best of the factory Honda men and the first nonSuzuki, qualifying at I:37.36 1. Zemke also improved from Friday and moved around American Honda's Ben Bostrom , the latte r failing to improve his effort from Friday and ending up fourth with his 1:37.498. "My best time came pretty early in the session," Ze mke said. "It wasn't on a qualifier, but I'm not sure we could use that tire for the race or not. It looked pretty bad when I came in. I just went out and put a long run on it. The times were pretty good on that tire, for sure . I put a couple of qualifiers on and didn't get anything out of either one of them. Both times I kind of just got held up in traffic. It's kind of a shame . I had som e really good splits going on that last one on the last lap. I'm not sure what these guys are doing out there. It's the last five minutes of qualifying, and they 're stillout there running around doing 45s or sixes or something. I understand everyo ne is trying to get their bikes set up for the race , but at least when I was a privateer coming up, I always knew that the last 10 minutes of qualifying was kind of for guys who had qualifying tires . That 's just the way it is, and it doesn't really matter. "I'm on the front row, and I'm happy about that . It's going to be a long race. The temperatures are going to be a lot hotter than we 've seen all weekend, and I think we 're allgoing to be sliding around quite a bit. I know I haven't been able to find a tire that I'm real happy with yet , so it's kind of a gamble going into the race, but we 'll see how it works out ." American Honda's Miguel Duhamel, Ducati Austin's Eric Bostrom, Attack KawasakI's Josh Hayes and privateer Yamaharider Larry Pegram would fill the second row. In all, 44 riders qualified for the two Nationals, the slowest some nine seconds a lap slower than Mladin.