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
Round 4 / 5 AMA SUPERBIKE May 1 -2, 2 0 0 4 I~ To • By PAUL CARRUTHERS PHOTOS BY HENNY RAy ABRAMS he re were a pair of AMA Superbike Nationals held at Infineon Raceway, the two bipolar in how they were won . One was a dominating Mat Mladin victory pulled off in expected and typical Mladln fashion. The other was an improbable Miguel Duhamel win, executed perfectly by the man from whom we've come to expect the unexpected. And it's the improbable that deserves mention first, even though it was held second. With his first AMA Superbike victory not more than a pitching wedge away, Erion Racing's Jake Zemke sat up for the final corner at Infineon, grabbed the brakes ... and watched his world turn upside down , the red Honda CBRIOOORR T AMA Chevrolet Superblke Championship MAT MLADIN AND MIGUEL DUHAMEL SPLIT WINS AT INFINEON RACEWAY -IN STRIKINGLY DIFFERENT WAYS of Duhamel slithering through on his right to the entrance to turn I I. Race over. Instead of win number one for the class rookie Zemke, who had led virtually the entire race, it was win number 27 for the cagey veteran Duhamel. And a painfullesson learned. "When he [Duhamel] went by me," Zemke admitted, "I had no idea he was there until I sat up and broke and this red thing came up beside me and I said, 'That's weird.' " It wasn't the final-corner pass that made Duhamel's win so improbable, it was the fact that he started the final lap almost two seconds behind Zemke. The race was over, or so we thought, the fans' (and television cameras) attention focused solely on the battle for third between Aaron Yates and Mladin. "I just rode my you-know-what off," Duhamel said. "I was sliding and going 34 MAY 12, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS over curbs and tankslapplng... doing what you do need to do to pull something like that off on the last lap. You really have to pull the pin and hope it goes your way. And it did. I just threw caution to the wind." It was hard not to feel for Zemke, but the rookie took the loss like a veteran. He was disappointed, but you got the feeling that he'd learned a hard lesson and would come away stronger from it. "I'm used to being on the podium, and it's not a knock, but it's getting kind of old - I'm tired of getting seconds and thirds," Zemke said. "It is what it is. I'm always happy to be up here, but at the same time ..." The two Honda riders had bounced back from a good old-fashioned Mladin butt kickin' the day prior, taking full advantage of an off day for the Australian and his Yoshimura Suzukion Sunday. 40th Anniversary On Saturday, however, that wasn't the case. That one was all Mladin, the pole sitter storming away to a 6.7-seco nd win over Duhamel, the latter running down Zemke when the Erion rider's tires went away after his hard-charging early laps. The Mladin/Duhamel/Zemke trio were the dominant factors on the weekend, with Duhamel coming out of the weekend smelling like a rose . The French Canadian was second on Saturday and first on Sunday, taking 68 points away from Northern California. Mladin, though he was bitterly disappointed with Sunday's performance, still managed to score 6S points over the course of the two days. Zemke tallied 62 points for the two days. Behind the main three, American Honda's Ben Bostrom ended the two days with fourth- and fifth-place finishes, though he was never a factor in either