Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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My 32 Briefly... OWN RACE Eric Bostrom Continued from poge 21 4th17th D ucati Austin's Eric Bostrom's struggles to get comfort able on the Ducati and its Michelin tires continued at Barbe r Motorsports Par k, the Californian finishing a dista nt fourth on Saturday and following that up with a seven th on Sunday. On Saturday, he learned a thing or two, however. ':Atthe start of the race, I ro de rea l hard and just wen t slowe r each lap," Bost rom said. "I finally just chilled because I was physically exhausted. I'm li ke , 'What am I do ing?' I was doing basicallya I:30 lap time, and I was physically exhauste d. I kind of just chilled and started using the thro tt le much earlier than I'd ever used the throttle, and I had more grip w ith the front tire that way, and the lap times just kept coming dow n. They weren't w he re they need to be, but they were better than w hat we've bee n doing. I got it a little bit sorted out . I think we can build on it tomo rrow, or e lse we will be devastated at a lot of the racetracks. It' s just a matt e r of changing my philosophy of getting around the racetrack. It's just the tires and the bike require something different." As for Sunday, we ll... "We got ou r ass kicked, " Bostrom said. "We act ually went faster by like .6 of a secon d. So it was actua lly bette r, but not good enough. We have a ways to go, and right now we just can't get th rough the turns . It just takes two days to get the bike turned, and everyone else is just cutting us up. If we don't get it figured ou t, we 'll be in trouble." 4 1 Jo sh Hayes 5th/6th ~-..._~-_~ Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes had another prod uct ive weekend on the ZX I0 Supe rbike. Hayes finished fifth on Saturday and sixth on Sunday, though his sixth was act ually mo re impressive, co nside ring he race d at the front for seve ral laps. "How about that start?" Hayes said after Sunday 's race . "We 're getting close r. This bike is still so new , and th ere's so many things we can try. W e 'r e just going through the motions right now and doing th e develop ment . This is where we felt we should have been at Daytona, rea lly We've had a lot of mecha nicals and . crap like that , but we're getti ng close r to those guys, and the bike is a pretty good bike. Dunlop helped us out, and we're happy with whe re we're at for today. It just needs to get better every weekend, and that's what we're looking for." 199 Geoff May 7th/9th Geo ff May's Saturday race on the Prieto Raci ng Suzuki was a lonely one, the Floridian finishing we ll behind John Haner and well ahead of Je re my Toye. He ended up seventh and followed that up the fo llowing day with a ninth. "It was very uneventfu l," said May on Satu rday. "It was a goo d race . I didn't get tired, and I figured out a lot for tomorrow. I thought I was having tire issues, so I slowed down in the middle, but then I started my charge too late . I thought I could catch [john] Haner by the end. I figured the Pire llis wo uld be a lot be tter here in the long run, and they were." 96 Eric Wood 9th/25th Riding with a broke n finger, Eric Wood had a dece nt weekend on the Hoote rs Suzuki, though his nonfinish on Sunday dampered his ninth on Saturday. "We wer e struggling with a chatter," Wood said after Saturday 's race . "We took a gamble before the race. We've been riding that bike on 17-inch wheels the whole time . Everyone has been having prob lems with front tires lasting, and there was a harder tire available in 16.S, which we hadn't ridden on all weekend . We took a gamble and threw it on the front of the bike, and we picked up a big chatter that qualifykind of bad and start out maybe be able to hang with the leade rs for the first few laps, and w he n their tires started going off, try to run with the m and try to start running them down to ward s the end . We can go fast on that bike. Hopefully we , w on't get into the issue wh ere w e get behind a 1000 and then it acce lerates and pulls us like that . As soo n as the tires goe s off, I think that 750's going to be the strongest bike out the re. They pull me a couple of bikelengths on the st raightaway, but we can make that up on the straights. Hopefully me not being as tired on the 750 as a 1000, com ing into lappe rs, I can put the bike whe re I want it and maybe go around the outside of some peop le and get them when we get into lappers beca use I know the bike's easy to ride. It's like my 600 - it 's so much e asie r than my 1000. Hop efully at the end of the race we should be on the bike to be on." Spiesnever made it to the end of the race, crashing out on the fifth lap. Yannaha privateer Larry Pegram did a little shoppi ng w hile in Birmingham , the O hioan forced to go to the local Y amaha dealer to buy himself a brand -new RI. Whe n Pegram's RI blew up on Friday, it left him w ithout a bike for the two Superbike Nationals. "It was the only choice I had," Pegram said. Pegram took the e ngine out of the new bike and put it in his race bike, but he e nded up racing a fairly stock motorcycle. "If it rains, I'll Win," Pegram half joked. Pegram e nded up I Ith on the new bike on Satur day and then it broke on Sunday. Wonder if he got the extende d warranty? we didn't have all weekend ton I knew w e w ere taking a gamble . If w e 're going to use that tomorrow, w e 're going to have to change the g. Ben Bostrom was leaving scrape marks all front end so me to make it work. I almost crashed a couple of times early in the race, then I just tried to relax and find a pace ." over the Barbe r circuit , thanks to new knee 155 Ben Bostrom DNF/5th Ben Bostrom's race wee kend didn't start well w hen he crashed out of the lead in Saturday's Super bike National on the fourth lap. "I put o n a har der tire than I wanted to ," Bostrom said. "The first couple of laps it was pushing and chatteri ng, and I finally said, 'I've got to go better than this.' The next lap I crashed. It was right in the middle when you 're on the front tire the strongest and getting ready to po int the rear." In Sunday 's race, Bostrom was again the fast starter. An d, again, he faded back. Then he had complete brain fade and let Aaron Yates past o n the final lap. "I lost conce ntration or something because I was trying just as hard, and the lap time just fe ll off a second a lap ," Bostro m said on Sunday. ':A the end I picked t it back up for the last cou ple of laps. The lap time came back, but then I thought the w hite flag was the checkered flag, and I shut off. I'm just lost. I do n't know what the dea l is. 'What the hell's going on he re?' Somet imes when you actuallystart riding harder, your shoulders start getting sore , you start putting so much bar pressure . Th e lap times are actually a second and a half slower." 20 Aaron Yate s DNF/4th Yoshim ura Suzuki's Aaron Yates crashed twice in Saturday 's race , the first in turn two on the opening lap and the other later in the race - after the Georgian had worked his way back into the top 10. On Sunday, he caught Ben Bostrom napping and beat him to the flag for fourth place. "We got the wh ite flagand went off in there and was just figuring where I was going to pass him," Y ates said. "It looked like he thought he got the chec kered flag or some thing and he just let off. I went around him and wen t up and started passing lapped guys. After the cool-off lap, he gave me some sort of gesture that his bike was quitting on him or something. Yeste rday, we ran that hard tire , that 770 or something, and Ben [Bostrom) and I were the only ones who ran it . And we we re the only ones to crash . I just we nt in there and tipped it in. In the morn ing we tried it, eve n with a qualifying tire , and it would push but it would give you some fee l. For the race it just went right off the side of it. I just cruised aro und after that and it just went away from me again." 44 John Haner 6th/8th Of all the privateers , John Haner and his Hooters Suzuki fared the best over the course of the wee kend at Barber, the Texan having the best Supe rbike weekend of his career. "I had a pre tty good start up there," Haner said of his Sunday run. "I got up to third, and I was like, 'We ll, I'm in third, this should be inte resting to see how long I can stay the re.' I did fairly decent. The bike was working rea lly well. I had a little issue with my arm , and they started co ming by. I wasn't going to mess up those guys - those are the factory guys, and I gave them a little roo m her e and ther e. Eric [Bostro m], Jake [Zem ke)... Migue l [Duhamel] and those guys. Overall, the race wen t we ll. I needed to beat all the guys who are on the same bikes I'm on, and that's what I have to do every weeke nd. I wa s about six seconds up on those guys, and I just tried to maintain it. I strained a pretty good m uscle in my arm at Infineon, and it's pro- gressively gotten worse as the weeke nd has gone on. I finished where I nee ded to fini sh, and it' s abo ut time . Finally, som ething went right t his weekend. I made a paycheck, so now I can pay ren t for the next two mo nths, and I'm really excited abo ut that ." pucks. "I had Jeff Lee make som e special knee pucks for Fontana and this trac k beca use they see m to grip your knee too much ," Bostrom said. "The se things just fry smoke... eve ryone thinks my bike's blowing up out there. And they leave mar ks all over the co urse. Miguel's [Duhamel) been picking on me because he said I'm not on the same line from one lap to the next. You can see my marks out the re from the knee sliders. They 're leaving do wn plastic. He 's [Lee) got to wo rk on the formula... or I'm going to catch on fire ." According to Dunlop, its to p factory guns used the following tir es in race one at Bar- ber: Ben Bostrom (hard front , medium/hard rear); Migue l Duhamel (hard front , med ium/hard rea r); Jake Zemke (hard front, hard rear ); Mat Mladin (hard front , hard rear ); Aaron Yates (hard front, hard rear). On Sunday, Ben Bost rom and Miguel Duhamel chos e a softer version of the hard front , and both used hard rears . Jake Ze mke and Mat Mladinopted for the same tire choice as the day befo re . Aaron Ya tes changed to a softe r hard-compound fro nt after his tw o crashes on Saturday. Dunlop brought seven different hard com pou nd front tires for the Superbikes at Barber, though everyone narrowed their choices down to just two by the time practice Co ntinued on page 25 www.cyclenews.com CYCLE NEWS • MAY 26,2004 23