Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA Repsol Superstock Series away with Bostrom diving under Zemke in turn two to start lap two, pushing them both wide while Mladin darted under both of them, nearly making contact with Bostrom on the way out. Good stuff. Then things settled down, Mladin leading by six-tenths of a second after three full laps with Bostrom and Zemke giving chase. Duhamel was also on the move after his less-than-stellar start, trying to hook on to the back of the lead trio. Behind him , Yates was fifth w ith Eric Bostrom riding hard to try to keep pace and eventually giving way to Hayes and the Attack Kawasaki. Bostrom would fight back past Hayes after recovering from an off-track excursion on the exit of turn three. Just when it looked like things were eas ing up a bit, enter lap I I. Zemke charged past Mladin on the entrance to the Corkscrew, but Mladin got him on the exit, the pair going side by side into turn 10. Then a lap later, Bostrom was by Zemke, the former diving up the inside of the latter going into turn I I. And then Zemke suddenly dropped back, falling off the pace almost instantly. After 12 complete laps , he was 104 seconds behind with Duhamel suddenly nipping at his heels. Up front , Mladin had just two-tenths of a second on Ben Bostrom as the pair snaked through heavy traffic. Just before taking the flag to put half the race in the books, Duhamel sneaked by Zemke and into third place. Zemke, who was pointing to his bike as he went up the front straight a lap earlier, was obviously suffering. Ben Bostrom won his 'irst AMA Superbike race since 1999. It was 'i"ing that he did it at Laguna Seca, the site some Bostrom's most memorable World Superbike victories. 0' My 98 OWN RACE Jake Zem ke tain Formula Xtreme win. Then he had a mechanical problem with the CBRIOOORR, and it cost him dearly in the battle for the Superbike Championship . "It was good for a little while until the problem arose, " Zemke said. "It was either electrical or fuel. The bike was cutting out pretty badly. They changed a bunch of stuff when we came in for the red flag. and I was hoping we would have something, but on the warm-up lap it was stilldoing it. We just limped home, and that 's all she wrote. Rightafter I passed Mat [Mladin), the next lap, it started. I passed him, and he passed me back. I instantly lost touch. It did it once, and I thought maybe it was just something weird. But it kept getting worse and worse. I just waved Ben [Bostrom) by in case he had a shot at Mat. I didn't want to hold him up." Zemke's crew chief Dave McGrath tried all he could to fix the problem during the break. "I changed everything electrical I could get my hands on," McGrath said. 26 20 JULY 21, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS Aaron Yates 4th Aaron Yates was a new man in the restarted portion of the race , the 7th You had to feel for jake Zemke. The Eri~n Honda rider was fast over the course of the entire weekend at Laguna, and only a problem with his CBR600RRcost him a cer- 0' Yoshimura Suzuki rider able to run the leader's pace . That was a far cry from what he was able to do prior to the race stoppage. 'I\t the start of the first race, right off on the warm -up lap, the thing spun up and had no grip," Yates said of his GSX-RI000. "The whole race was going like that for me in the first part . But I kinda of hated to see the red flag. I was in a pretty good rhythm, running around . Then I was able to get new tires on the bike, and we made a couple of little changes that made the bike better. It hung in there a good bit longer. It was going pretty decent. I was hoping to stay in front of Miguel [Duhamel) there. I was trying hard to do that , slidingallover the place. I ran up on a lapper there and had to breathe it a bit. Miguelwas already up on the inside and went by. I did what I could in a couple of places to try and get by, but the bike was moving around so much, it was hard to do it without something happening. The Suzuki was going pretty good. " 72 Larry Pegram 9th Larry Pegram benefited from getting World Superbike Pirellis at Laguna. Unfortunateiy, he couldn't get enough of them to get him through the entire race . "We got a tire the first stint that I really liked," Pegram said. "It was one that the World Superbike guys were runn ing. but everyone wanted to run it , 40th Anniversary But Zemke was given a reprieve when Jeff Tigert crashed on the e xit of turn 10, his bike lying in the middle of the track and prompting the red flag, the stoppage allowing everyone who needed to make adjustments to do just that. Duhamel would also be given another opportunity at not muffing the start and getting off with the fast trio that was ahead of him . Zemke's CBR IOOORR had been cutting out intermittently, but as is the case with such a dilemma, it's hard to know if the problem was fixed o r not. Only time would tell if it was. Ben Bostrom, meanwhile, was in deep discussion with both his crew chief Merlyn Plumlee and a Dunlop tire technician during the break as they tried to decide what tire to fit. They had one already mounted and fitted , but they changed their minds prior to the restart. " It was like, 'W hat size rim are they on , what tire are they on?''' Bostrom explained later. " It was a big fight . In the end, we just ran the same tire as these guys. We just ran the same tire, just to keep it straight up . It was only half race, so you could choose any tire you wanted, but I thought it was better to choose the same rubber." It was clear straight away that Zemke's problems weren't cured when the lights turned to green for the re start, the Californian ending the first lap 3.2 seconds behind the leader - Ben Bostrom. It would only get worse for Zemke. The action up front was hectic, especially with championship foes Mladin and so I could only get one . So when they red-flagged it, I had to go with a harder tire, and it didn't Work as good . I think we would have been better off the first stint because we were catching back up to jake ." 41 Jos h Hayes 6th Attack KawasakI's josh Hayes was another who reaped the benefits of the red flag. his crew able to fixa chain that was jumping on the sprocket. "I don't know what happened on the first start other than I couldn't hit my marks there," Hayes said. "Then a chain spun the teeth off the rear sprocket, and so I was riding around with the thing spinning the whole time . The chain was just kind of freewheeling on the sprocket. I was just trying to be smooth and see if I could make it to the end , so the red flag kind of saved my butt a little bit. After the red flag, I felt pretty good and was havingfun riding right there with Eric [Bostrom]. I got in front of him and was doing the best I could, but things started moving around a little bit, and I couldn't keep up that pace. He could just out-accelerate me out of I I and into tum one . He was killing me there."

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