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/128333
" It was really an excit ing race , Duhamel said . "O bvio usly, Aaron [Yates ] was d o ing everything. When yo u race long eno ugh w ith these guys, you 're kind of ha ppy w hen you see them up there when they are st rugg ling, but it was like, ' Damn, he 's taking points away from me; I gotta get in fro nt o f him.' He was struggling all weekend, but he surely found some speed there at the en d . We were doing low 26s , and he was matching. It was just a good battle, but I looked at the board and saw that the race was pretty short. I said , 'I gotta get by him .' I got by him, he got back by me, and I got back by him. We were swapping back and forth, nice and clean, and it was just hard rac ing. He was go ing everything he cou ld to put it on the podium, and hats off to him for putting it together there at the end. I was hoping to get in front of him earlier to make a run at Mat [Mladin] a nd Be n [Bostro m] . My bike was working pr etty good, but I ran out o f time. I'm very happy. Laguna has always been tough on me, and I always do d ece nt he re. Th ird is ve ry decent again." I Yates ended up fourth , more than I I seconds clear of fifth-placed Eric Bostrom, the Ducat i Austin rider never in the hunt over the course of the weekend on his Michelin-shod 999 . In fact , Bo stro m had his hands full fo r most of the day wit h Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes, the ZX-I a rider finally lo sing out in the battle w ith the Ducati by some five seconds . W ith Mladin pu lling ou t a 1a-point lead on Duhamel in t he standings, 391 -381 , it was Erion Honda's Jake Zemke who saw his championship hopes take a bit of a dash ing at Laguna. Zemke ended the race in seventh place , his CBR IDOaRR having elect rical or fuel troubles th at ru n poorly. Zemke was at the fro the race , then th e troubles set in i to the re d nag. The team, howeve r, n't get rid of the gremli n du ring the b and Zemke had to nurse it home in s e nth . He now trails Mladin by 19 points. Lion Racing Suzu ki's Jaco b Holde ended up eighth with Triang le Cycle Yamaha' s Larry Pegram and Team Prieto Racing's Geoff May rounding o ut the top Ia finishers. When the race got started under brilliant sunshine on the Monterey Pen insula, Zemke led the way over the hill and into turn two, t he pack shuffling in behind him . Eric Bostrom got a great start from ro w two and was fourth behind Be n Bostrom and Mladin. Yates held fifth, with Duhamel sixth. There was red-hot action straight The Ben Bo§1:rom Revival Half-Hour For 30 minutes on a clear and sunny aftemoon on the Monte rey Pen insula, Ben Bostrom reminded everyon e of why he has at times been co nsidered one of the best Superbike riders in the wo rld. It's a shame that we had to wait a year and a half into his revived AMA Superbike career to see it . But see it we did. The American Honda rider scorched his way around the 2.2-mile Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca at a lap-record mark of I:24.906 - a near-pe rfect lap that finallybro ke Anthony Gobe rt's record of 1:25.507, set back in 1999. Bostrom has been hinting of a retum to form of late, and at one of his favorite racetracks (and the site of three of his seven career World Superbike victories) he rebounded to the very top , ea rning his first pole position of the season and setti ng himself up as the man to beat in Sunday's race. Modest as always, Bostrom was all smiles afte r the shorter-than -normal 30-minute session that was packed into a Saturday afternoon of a busy AMNWorld Superbike com bined weekend. "That was a pretty fun qualifying session," Bostrom said. "I know it was rea l short, and I know a lot of these guys got shorted for time, so the FX bike [Formula Xtreme, w hich was held just prior to Super bike qualifying] gave us a little more practice than say Hat [H ladin]. It was great. Each of these guys were putting in a really fast lap, and we just saw the times coming down - 25.7. Then I saw 25.3, and Hat did a 25.2... it just kept dropping. We put in a pretty fast lap. We didn't have anything to lose. The bike is wo rking really well, so a big thanks to the Honda guys - we just got a lucky one in there, and it wo rked out." Bost rom is wellout of the champ ionship hunt, and he knows it. And he came to Lagunawith a win or crash att itude. That didn't change after qualifying. "I'd rathe r crash than lose this, so we will be out there pushing pretty hard eve ry lap," Bostrom said. "These guys have a champ ionship to worry about, and I'm just out there toying around." One of those deep in a championship fight is Erion Honda's Jake Ze mke, and the man who resides just down the road in Paso Robles made the most of his qualifying session despite chasing front-end chatter with his CBR10OORR. "We've bee n fighting it [front-e nd chatter] since we got here ," Ze mke said. "It' s a little bit sketchy, and qualifiers [tire s) didn't help they magnified the problem ." Ze mke, like Bostrom and Higuel Duhamel, raced in the Formula Xtre me final just before Superbike qualifying, but Zemke said it wasn't an issue . "It was business as usual," Zemke said. "The Formula Xtreme race actually went by pret ty quick - it was two short segments . It was no prob lem going out there. The biggest thing we 've bee n figh ting all weekend is traffic, but every body is in the same boat. Before qualifying, I had two clean laps the whole weekend and about eight timed laps I think total . Track time is at a maximum here, and we 're definitely fightingsome bike proble ms now, and hopefully tomorrow morn ing we 'll make it better and be good for the race." The third-fastest rider on the day was YoshimuraSuzuki's Hat Hladin, the Aussie doing well at a racetrack that is not one of his favorites. But it was a track where he could at least make up some of the top -speed deficit his GSX-RI000 was in when compared to the factory Hondas. Hladin lapped at I:25.22, just off the I:25.2 19 he did during Superpole qualifying for last year 's World Superbike race here . "I th ink we 're looking okay," Hladin said. "We put a pretty good lap in there. These guys just went a bit quicker. I came in, and I think I'd done a 5.4 [I :25.4) or a 5.5, and I was shaking my head. There was a 5.3 that was to be beat at the time . I said I might have a couple of tenths , but that's it. As it turns out , I had 2 1/2 tenths better. That was it for me. That's the best that bike cou ld do today. Even if Igot it absolutely perfect, a 4.9 [24.9) -1 don't think so, not for me." American Honda's Duhamel would fill the front row, the man who is right on H ladin's tail in the championship chase up front the whole weekend and ready to battle on a track that has never bee n overly kind to him. "We found some decent setups there · we got back to where we need to be ," Duhamel said. "We found out some good stuff. It worked good . As far as qualifying goes, that 25.8 [a I:25.866) was pretty easy. The bike is rea llyfast - the CBRIOOORR is really great . Unfortunately we discovered to our dismay that 6 1/4 (inch wheels) is not the way to go for me. That's what we had mounted up, and I couldn't quite make the bike wor k the way I needed it to . Lap traffic one lap... I'm sure everybody has the ir little stories. I feel confident even though I'm a little bit off that I could have gotten close, even with the 6 1/4. I'm happy." The second row of the grid would be headed by YoshimuraSuzuki's Aaron Y ates, the Georgian unable to match the factory men aihead of him and crack the I:26 barrier. But Yates was stillfifth quickest at I:26.273, a few ticks faster than Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes. Ducati Austin's Eric Bostrom was seventh, but well off the pace , the Californian only managing to muster up a 1:27.986 - a full three seconds slower than his older brother. Jacob Holden and his privatee r Suzuki GSX-RIOOO would comp lete row two with a 1:28.534. In all, 38 riders qualified for the Natio nal. FGSport announced a three-day attendance of 93 ,000 for the combined AHNWorid Superbike weeke nd at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Little known fact dept : Jason Pridmore played 36 holes of golf with Michael Jordan after the RoadAmerica round of the series. Pridmore hooked up with Jordan in Chicago and came out on top of his match with the NBA legend. "I shot a 71 and a 73," Pridmore said. "I know he was in the 70s. He's a good player. He's solid around the greens. He's also a really nice guy, and we had a great time. He just knew that I played golf, and it just got set up for us go to play." Yamaha's Damon Buckmaster said his recently repaired left wrist was sore but otherwise okay in his first time back on the bike since suffering the injury at Barber Hotorsports Park. Buckmaster 's main worry was the conflicting reports he was getting on whether the screw that was placed in the broken bone was moving arou nd or not. An H RI in a few weeks should clear up the situation, and Bucky w ill find out at that point whether the screw can stay or if it w ill have to be removed . Ben Bostrom remembe rs well the lap Anthony Gobert tumed in 1999 that put him on pole position and also set a lap record at Laguna that held until Bostrom broke it on Saturday afternoon . "I think he put in a good lap," Bostrom said. "I rem em ber that . I think he did a 25.1 [a 1:25.507]. Whatever he did, it was fast. I'd done like som e kind of high 25, and there was no way I co uld do that kind of lap. He did a great lap, and that's how that lap, stood. I remember looking and seeing that [Kevin) Schwantz held the track record at Assen for like a decade until the y changed the track." With a happy Ben Bostrom on pole for Sunday's Nat ional, his brother Eric Bost rom was at the other end of the spectrum - a disappointed seventh and some three seconds off his brother' s pace after a grue ling 30 minutes of prob lems in which his number-one bike was rendered unusable. "It was a frustrating qualifying session," Eric Bostrom said. "O ur number-one bike had a problem, so we spent a bit of time wo rking on it . We've bee n test ing the two bikes with very different setups , and it was the one I prefer that had a problem . I only got three timed laps with the bike I was uncomfortable on, so I can't say this is the best qualifying I've ever had. I went a full second slowe r than Idid this morning. We've got a lot of work to do now. Overall, Iguess we've had a lack of tra ck time, so we'll just have to do the best we can to mor ro w ." Huch to Hat H ladin and Suzuki's chagrin, Ho nda received its second installme nt of updated parts for its factory CBRIoooRR Superbikes prior to Laguna Seca. And the team is expecting at least one more set of parts as the season progresses. "We did get some im proved engine pieces . upgrades you could say," team manager Chuck Millersaid. "Intemal engine pieces.