Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Gobert, th ird today, is third with 91 . Go bert tried some new setup ideas in the morning warm-up, and they'd worked . So the setup stayed fo r the rac e , and he was th ere at th e sta rt. Early on he was caught behind Spies and Tommy Hay den, moving into third on the sixt h lap. Afte r the sto ppage , he move d bac k to th ird on th e 1Ith lap , the t hird lap o f the restart, where he 'd sta y to the e nd , closing hard on Buckmaster. " I th ink Jamie [Hacking], I don't know if he read the bo ard or no t , but I was ca tc hing him , so he made the move on Damon [Buc kmast er] , and he pulled a second, and that's a ll he needed to be safe," Gobert said. " My last lap th ere was probably on e o f my quic kest laps of the ra ce on o ld tires . I was on him, but that was it. I couldn't make the mo ve and finished w he re I d id." There was le ss th an a tenth to Tommy Hayden, who'd never given up but fe lt the race needed to be longer for his set-up to come in. DiSalvo was alone in fifth, wit h Spies My OWN 22 eight seconds back and a second in fron t of Valvoline EMGO Suzuk i's Steve Rapp. Oil INFINEON RAC EWAY SONOMA, C AUFORN IA RESULTS: MAy 2, 2004 (ROUND 3) REPSOL SISTK: I. Jamie Hacking (Yam); 2. Damon Buc kmast er (Yam); 3. Aaron Gobert (Y am); 4. Tom my Hayden (Kaw): 5. Jason DiSalvo (Yam): 6. Ben Spies (502): 7. Steve Rapp (Sla ); 8. Josh Hayes (Suz); 9. Vincent Haskceec (Sua) : IO. jacob Holden (Sua): II. Rogeo- Lee Hayde n (Kaw): 12. Alex Gobert (Hon ): 13. John H..,., (Sua): 14. Shawn H igbee (Sua); 15. Lee Aa ee (502): 16. Corey Eaton (Sua); 17. Eric Wood (Sua); 18. Geoff May (Sua); 19. Jason Cu,,~ (Sua): 20 . Gany Co mbs (Sua): 2 1. Mon tez Stewart (Y am); 22. James King (Y am); 23. Mark Simon (Suz); 24. Ruben Munoz (Suz); 2S. lash Mullen (Suz); 26. David Guy (Sua); 27. Pet... Doyle (Sua); 28 . J.J. Roet l;n (Suz): 29 . Raul Padilla (Suz); 30. David \Vhite (Sul ). Time: NJA due to red flag Distance : 17 laps. 39.11 miles Average speed: N/A due to red flag Margin of victory: 1.76 1 sec . REPSOL SUPERSTOCK C'SH IP POINTS STANOINGS (After ) of II rounds): I . Jamie Hacking 98/1 win); 2. Damon Buckmas .., (93): 3. AMon Gobert (9 1/1 ): 4 . Be n Spies (8 7/ 1): 5. Tommy Hayden (80) : 6. Jason DiSalvo (78) ; 7. Rag... Lee Hayden (7 1): 8. Steve Raw (69 ); 9. Jo hn Haner (59); 10. Shawn Higbee (56); I I. (TIE) Jacob HoIdetv' Lee Acree (SO); 13. (TIE) Josh HayesIVincen t HaskoveciGeo ff May (4B): 16. (TIE) Alex Gobe n/Eric Wood (45): 18. Jason Pridmoee (39); 19. Corey Eaton (36); 20. 0 1" Caylor (25). UP COMING ROUNDS: R 4-B ound irmingham A , labama, May 16 R 5 -F ound ountain, Colorado, May30 RACE Tommy Hayden 4th Kawasaki's Tommy Hayde n was one of several riders not helped by the red flag . Had the race run to term, he was confident his setup would have be e n op timal . As it was, he had to make it work in what was essentially a nine-lap race. "Just did n't quite have the speed of the front guys ," Hayden said . "Guess more than anything, early on they could really put some laps in, an d it seemed like every time as we were goin g , I could get closer and closer because I was right on Damon [Buckmaster] for second basically there the last lap, me and Aaron [Gobert]. And then I felt like I was really coming on towards the end, but maybe I ha d a little better setup fo r later in th e race." 11 Be n Spies 6th "It was anything and everything," Yoshimura Suzuki's Ben Spie s said o f his sixth-place finish. From the red flag o n, he ma de no progress, sitting well be hind Graves Moto rs po rts Yamaha's Jaso n D iSalvo t he whole way. "Basically, it's t he way t he frame is. It's an offse t issue , an d w e can't change it. It just doe sn't work in the b ig corners. I can go fast for a few lap s, a nd t hen I ove rride the front tire. We have som e suspension parts co ming that we hope wi ll fix it ." 40 Jason DiSalvo 4th Gra ves Moto rsports Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo had n't been in fifth place for long w hen the red flag came ou t . He was moving forward , but that momen tu m w ou ld end o n t he re-start. Fo r t he final nine laps he was sixth at the back of a trio that included teammate Aaron Gobe rt and Kawasaki's To m my Hayden. O nly at the e nd did he drop off the pa ce . " I couldn't be lie ve how fast t he race pace was that seco nd ha lf of t he race," DiSalvo said . "I think Damo n [Buckmaster] did like a 37 at one point [Buckmaster had the fast lap of the race at I:37.54B]. O nce everything got go ing , my little group, we started to close up on them too. By the end we caught the leaders. I just didn't want to do anything dumb o n the last lap . I just kind of sat back. Waited to see what would happen." 95 Roger Le e Hayden 11th After a bad start, Kawasaki's Roger Lee Hayden had made his way fro m I Ith to e ighth when the red flag stopped the race. The team changed tires, and Hayden found a problem with the front end of the bike . "It just wouldn't turn. It was chatteri ng completely off the track. Th e only thing I could d o was bring it home from there." Briefly... No Umits Suzuki's Jason Pridmore was back on a motorcycle just three weeks after suffering a se rious shoulder injury in a testing crash at the Stree ts of Willow Springs in Rosamond , California. Dr. Art Ting performed surgery on Pridmore 's right shoulder after the crash, and Pridmore was supposed to be out of action for six to eight weeks. The shoulder injury would keep Pridmore out of the Superstock class. but he was riding his 600 . "For this one race it will work," Pridmore said with an ice pack on his injured right shoulder. "It' s a long way from being right. I got into therapy for the first time last Thursday, and it's supposed to be a six- to eight-week injury. I just couldn't hold on to the 1000, 50 I stayed off of it." With Pridmore 's teammate Jimmy Moore on the injured list until Brainerd, the team brought in Br ian Pa rriott to ride Pridmore's GSX-RI000. Parriott, however, ended up not riding after hurting himself in a supermoto crash on Saturday at Infine on. Pridmore's injury not only put a hamper o n his racing. it's also preventing him from try ing to qualify for golf's U.S. Open . "I was going to try and qualify the day before Birmingham [the Barber Motorsports Park round of the series], " Pridmore said of a qualifier slated for the Birmingham area. "Now I think I'll try and qualifyfor the U.S. Pub Unks tourney in Milwaukee : ' The U.S. Public Unks tournament is scheduled for the weekend after the Laguna Seca round of the AHA series . Pridmore's bad luc k continued on Friday when ne ither of his Form ula Xtreme bikes would run. Since he didn't tum a lap in qualifying. he was forced to take a provisional start from the AHA and would line up dead last for Sunday's race . "Because it' s so painful to ta ke my leathers on and off, I had the m on for four hours , and I didn't get to do a lap," Pridmore said. Pridmore started last in the Formu la Xtreme race but finished an impressive sixth. Mat Mlad in showed up at Infineon with freshly cropped hair, making him look like the Mladin of 1998. Migu el Duhamel was struggling mightily with his Honda CBRIooORR Superbike on Friday at Infineon, a front -end chatter makIng the bike virtually impossible to ride . "I may have to have a little seance or something because I think it' s possessed or so mething - it just doesn't want to listen," Duhamel said. "It's to point where I am actually co nfused , and I don 't even know what to tell them . We have a really bad chatt er proble m, and it's getting bigger like a virus. It's growing. No matte r w hat we do , this bike is chattering in and out of corners - it's like the wheels are n't ro und anymore. I guess I'm going to go chec k and make sure the wheels are round . I came in, and we put a qualifier on out of reflex, but I told them not to put any more on becaus e it was just a waste of time and a waste of tires. We're going to have to wo rk hard tomorro w and get ours elves back up there becau se I like this t rack, and obviously I can www.cyclenews.com go fast on it . We just need to get together. We're going to have to go through it with a fine-tooth com b. There's something on that bike that I've never seen before , and it's just not normal for this thing to be vibrating really bad. My teeth fillings are falling out, and I'm choking on them in the comers. It's really bad . I can't even see the tach . I wish I had better info for my team . We're going to have to tear that bike down. I won 't be leaving here for a couple of hours. I think we need a young priest and an old priest . We just need to sit down and find out what's wrong with this bike : ' Duhamel e nded up fifth, a second and a half off Mat Mladin's best on Friday. The French Canadian, however, did earn pole pos ition for Sunday's Formula Xtreme race on Friday. And the team obviously fixed Duhamel's chatter w oes come race time, the French Canadian finishing second on Saturday and winning on Sunday. "It' s a weird thing that happened during the weekend where we had humongous chatter," Duhamel said. "I can't rea llyte ll you what they did because it would take two hours. They basicallywent through the w hole bike and redid everything, retightened everything and retorqued everything. and the priest came through as well:' Attac k Kawasaki's Josh Haye s crashe d his ZX-I OR Superbike on Friday morning in turn four and spent the rest of the weekend battered and bruised , the bike landing on his back and leaving scrapes and bruises between his shoulder blades. He also had sore anns. With Infineon Raceway being re paved since last year 's race , the new surface proved to be a bit harde r on tires, limiting tire life and basically forcing everyone to use a harder compound than they would have liked . "I think for sure that any new surface typ ically makes it a little bit harder on tires , and I think all of us have seen that this week," Mladin said. "In front tires and rear tires. As I said, ideally the tires that most of us wou ld have wanted to use, we won't be able to use , so we 're going to have to have something a little bit different: ' Aaron Yate s liked the circuit better before the re paving. "It seems to have made it a little bit faster in some areas , but it's also made it seem shorter and tighter: ' Yates said. "It's a little tougher getting the bike arou nd. Being smoother, you carry more speed, and it see ms shorter and tighter. It's a little harder to get around." Although it was a work in progress, Y ates was trying to modify his riding style, emu lating his teammate Mladin in an effort to try to duplicate some of his results . "I'm actually putting a effort into riding the bike a little differently," Y ates explained after qualifying. "I always like to sit up on the front of the seat and hang over the thing with my e lbows up. I thought a lot about it last night , and I know the way Mat's rides has been working pretty good for him, 50 I tried to imitate him just a little bit with the seating pos ition and stuff, and it seemed to really make a difference . It Continued on page 45 CYCLE N EW S • MAY 12, 2004 43

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