Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA Chevrolet S uper bike Champions hip Ser ies bike but not the fluids, and the race was stopped . The restart saw another Ben Bostrom holeshot, and the Honda rider held that lead for the first three laps. Duhamel and Mladin, meanwhile, were the victims of horr ible starts , the pair crossing the line in seventh and eighth, respectively. '" knew I gridded up fourth, but I don't think I started fourth ," Duhamel said. "I don't know why I had a little bit of troub le with the clutch there. I didn't know whe re I was - I was way back there. But the bike was working so good besides that, the little glitch with the clutch on the start , I just put my head down a little bit and worked hard." With those two well down the order, it gave some others a chance to run up front some for the first time . The first lap ended with Bostrom leading Hayes, Yates,Zem ke, Haner and Eric Bostrom. After three laps, Ben Bostrom and Zemke were clear at the front with a gap back to Hayes and Yates. Ben Bostrom was 4.3 seconds ahead of Duhame l, who was fifth. Mladin was seven th, be hind Eric Bostrom, and 4.6 seco nds off the lead. Those two , howeve r, were worth watching. Zemke took over at the front on the fourth lap, and he wou ld gradually start to inch away from Ben Bostrom. The DuhameV Mladin duo was third and fourth but weren't really making much headway into the gap to Ze mke , the pair still almost five seconds behind. Bythe 15th lap, Zemke had 4.2 seconds on Be n Bostrom, 4.5 on Mladin and 5.1 on Duhamel, the latter pairing having switched positions. On the next lap, Mladin got around Ben Bostro m, and Duhamel followed suit. Bostro m would start a steady fade that wou ld land him in fifth at the finish. At the end of 16 laps, Mladin was four seconds behind Zemke. After IB laps, that gap was down to 2.9, Ze mke not gett ing the best of it in traffic. Duhamel passed Mladin on the 20th lap and was 2. 1seconds behind at the end of that lap. For Zemk e, trou ble was com ing. With Duhamel hot on the trail, Mladin was starting to go backward - the clutch on his Suzuki repo rtedly failing him. He wou ld refuse com ment later, though the press release from his publicisthinted at machine 24 trouble . "There's not much to say, Mladin said in the postrace press confer e nce . "We came th ird. That's it. No excuses. We just didn't get the job done . That' s it. What do you want me to say? Miguel [Duhame l] won the race. That's it." Duhamel did indeed win the race, his pass of Zemke coming in the final comer as they prepared to start their final lap. Zemke tried to retaliate, but once againlappers thwarted him. The story of his race. "Lappers, you know," Zemke said. "Yesterday they cost me a bit, and today they cost me a lot. They we re getting the blue flag every time at the start/finish line, and you'd go into tum two, and you can lose so much time in that comer. You can't reallygo around the outside of someone in tum two because if you do, you'll just lose the front - the re's no traction out there. I just kept hitting guys through two , through two , through two, and I could just see my lead shrinking and shrinking. Every time I'd hit a lapper, it'd cost me a second and a halfa lap, or at least a second . I set out on a pretty quick pace at the beginning, and the tires felt pretty good , better than yesterday, actually . We we re running almost a second a lap faster through the beginning part of the race. Yesterday we were running like 27, flat and today we were 26.3, 26.4. I got a little bit of a gap back to the boys, and I just couldn't get through the traffic. It's pretty bad when you're lapping the same guys before halfway through the race. It's kind of ridiculous, I think." Duhamel agreed with Zemke's assessment of the backmarkers , but he'd still worked his magic once again. "There was one guy that if I wasn't here, I'd probab ly be talking to him right now," Duhame l said. "I just referred to him politely as an idiot. He looked right back at me, saw me coming, put his head down and went about his business of chopping me off for like three come rs. Even though I wo n and everyt hing, I have quite a bit of emotion toward that guy. He has no idea what he's doing. And some other guys with the blue flag, I don't know what they are thinking. I understand when you are racing with somebocIy, but this one guy was all by himself. He just wanted to be a capital D kind of guy - an idiot. It's just a little bit beyond me how these guys can look back and want to race with us for a couple of corners." Asfor the race itself- and his 28th career victory - Duhamel was pleased. Well pleased . His race win was just over 10 seconds quicker than Mladin's win from the day prior - and it was a record for the two-yearold venue. "I don't want to sound like I'm being too polite toward the guys, but I think any one of these guys could have won with that MAY 26, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS pace ," Duhamel said. "Hats off to Jake and hats off to Mat, they did an incredible job. I'm just ecstat ic. It's one of the wins that I'll put in my book as one of my really good wins. I rode 100 percent the whole race. With the track being as hot as it is, you just couldn't afford to make a mistake. I got close a few times. Maybe it looked smooth to everybocly in here , but it was quite a handful out there. The surface here at Barber is something different that we don't see anywhere else, and you have to be on your toes. It's more of a compliment to the top three guys that we were able to hold that pace and not make any mistakes. I'm just proud to be able to come through in such a hard race." Zemke knew Duhamel was coming, but he was at a loss to do anythingabout it. The look in his face showed that this isn't a man who is going to be content with gettingsecond for much longer. "I just kept my head down and kept going about my business," Zemke said. 'Y>.II the way up until I saw Miguel. The lap before he passed me, he showed me a wheel in the last corner. I reallywasn't worried abou t what was behind me - I was just worried about the guys that we re in front of me. That's abo ut it." Duhamel said he'd worked extensively on bike set up after finishing thir d in Saturday's race. In fact, the work continued right up to the point when the lights flashed gree n. "Mine was quite a bit different [from the day befo re]," Duhamel said of his CBRIOOORR. "We discove red some things we needed to address . We ran some diff erent forks and got caught off guard with som e setups. W ith AI [Ludington] and Darren Marshall, our compute r guy, we changed the whole bike around . To be honest with you, after the parade lap, I talked to AI some more, and we did a click here and a click the re. Low and behold, we did a 26.1 in the race, and the bike was terrific. We 40th A nn iversary also used a different rear and a different front and different widths. Mycomfort level was much higher today." eN BARB ER MOTORSPORTS PARK B IRMINGHAM, A1ABAMA RESULTS: MAy 15 -16, 2004 IRouNDs 6-7) S1BK QUA1.IFYIN G, I. M" MIad;n ( 1,25.25 1); 2. Ben ~ . M;gue! Duhamel ( 1,25.760); 5. AMon 'rates ( 1,26.0 19); 6 . Josh Hayes (1:27.508); 7. Eric Bostr om ( 1:27.647); 8. John Haner ( I,2B.332); 9 . Geoff May ( I,2B.7oo); 10. Eri lkhart

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