Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Nicoll , who did not contest the Nashville ro und, is still third in the class, w ith 44 . SUPERMOTO Henry earned th e pole position after bliste ring the track in Superpole, posti ng a t ime of 46.4 19 seconds . Ward was second fastest, with a time of 47.036. Team Ultimate Edge Racing Yamaha's Mark Burkhart was th ird fastest, with a time of 47 .140 . Team Suzuki's Travis Pastrana rounded out the front row, w ith a time of 4B.41 I. Henry got the holeshot, leadi ng the 24 -rid e r field into turn one, with Ward se co nd. Fillmore then tried to complicate things by blasting off the front row to ru n up the outside of Ward on the bra kes into turn one. The pair was side by side briefly before Wa rd sq uirt ed ahea d on the paved infie ld stra ightaway. Past rana got off to a sixt h-place start, behind East Hills Motorsports' Leona rdo Bagnis and Burk hart, but the former AMA 12Scc National MX Champion would slip to seventh im med iate ly when Josh Chisum passed him on the brakes in turn one while the field was still sorting itself out. Chisum thus put himself at the head of a four-rider train that included Pastrana, All Access KTM's Micky Dymond and Red Bull KTM's Kunzel , the hard-charging German coming from the fifth row after failing to transfer from his heat race earlier in th e day a nd having to run a semi to ma ke the fina l. CHM Exhaust/Pro Honda Oils ' Ale xandre Thieba ult ro unded o ut the to p lOon the o pening lap . Hen ry q uickly tri e d to es cape from Wa rd , an d he appeared to be ge tting the job done as he built a I. S-sec on d gap o n Ward, who appeared to remain calm, cool an d collected. "I t ried to pass him [He nry] in the d irt for th e first three laps," Ward sa id. "I was ru nning a d ifferent line than he was , but t he n he changed his line and equaled it o ut a littl e bit. I t hink that my biggest moment was probably on the start w ith Chris coming fro m the second ro w o n th e outside of me. Doug kind of protected the inside , and didn't go into t he turn ha rd. Chris buried it in there on the outside, and we bumped a little bit. Luckily I stayed in second because that could have blown it. I thin k Doug had a pace to get away, and I think he might not have messed up because he wouldn't have had the pressure of me being right there on him . That was my big move right there, not letting Chris get ahead of me." It all came apart for Henry on lap 10, when he inex plicably stalled his eng ine be tween the short urban kicke r jum p and the urban ta bleto p located just after the dirt secti on o n lap I I. War d assumed the lea d. " It' s to ugh wh en you have somebody on yo ur butt like that ," Ward sa id. " It was easier for me in secon d than it was for him . T he mistakes ar e m ore whe n you're leadi ng, an d he made a couple mistake s. My biggest m ista ke w as not getting th e pole . If I was o ut front, then it would have been a littl e e asie r. It was good . Henry lost several seconds t rying to resta rt his bike , and he eventually rejoined the ra ce in 13th place. "T he first part w e nt good, but then I hit a neutral out there and ended up stalling it, and it took me forever to get go ing again," Henry said . " I worked my w ay bac k up , but I don't know where I finished. I know that Th iebault was ahead of me. It was good. I got Superpole. I'm a little bummed that the AMA [scoring] th ing didn't work out because I know that I had some really fast lap times out there, but th e ir timing didn't work . Hopefully somebody had some times o n me." Henry's m iscue allowed Fillmore to move up to second and Kunzel to t hird , after the German d isposed of Bagnis , Chisum and Th iebault. " I have a really good starts - all times today for me I have really good starts," Kunzel said. "I also have a good line on the first comer [in the Supermoto], and I push really hard in the first laps, and when I co me to the finish, I thin k that I was in the fourth position. I did not see that Henry had a mistake. Then when I see that I was third, it was nice for me. I hope I can win in the 4S0 next time. This was a shit start place." Pastrana had slipped back to IOth by the halfway mark , sandwiched between Dymond and Thiebault. Fillmore appeared as though he might actually be gaining on Ward around lap 14, but Ward had the race well in hand by then, and he continued to run lap times in the low 47-second range. The be st battle on the track was for th e fifth spot among Bagnis, Thiebault, Chisum, Dymond and Drew, the group having gotten away from Pastrana. Th iebault would end up making a move on Bagnis in tum on e on lap 21 to sec ure fifth place . Henry wasn't done yet, th o ugh, and he attacked the group late in the race, slicing his way through from ninth to sixth in the final twp laps . " It' s go ing to be really tough t o catch him: ' Henry said of his po ints deficit to Ward. "I'll do the best I can. Yo u ne ver kno w. Anything could happen . He could have a bad race, and that w ould put me right back in there aga in. We'll have to wait and see." Ward was able to maintain his lead to the finish. AMA sco ring claimed that Ward won by a mere second, but it appeared to be a much greater margin than that. Whatever it was, Fillmore held about the same gap over third-placed Kunzel at the stripe. "I was looking for one-two-three on the podium, but it worked out even better for me because I finished second: ' runner-up Fillmore said. " I actually had it pretty easy. Kunzel was co ming from the back , but I had e no ugh of a gap on him that I d idn't feel any pressure . Wardy might have been pulling away from me a little bit, but between me, Wardy and Kunzel, we all had about the same gap between us . The track got real slick, but it I liked it. The race was great. It couldn't have gone any better." Briefly... Although mos t of the ride rs said that the y liked the Don Canet-designed Nashville track, some of them noticed that it did get qu ite slick after the sun went down and the moisture in the air began to settle. "The temperatur e of the track [went down)," Jeff Ward said. "Earlier today the re was a little more grip on the ou t laps because of the tire temp. At night, the first two laps of qualifying and the race it was stepping out a little bit, but then it was just like the daytime, exce pt for the dirt ." While he is in the series points lead in the Supermoto class, Jeff Ward is keeping a close eye on the consistent-finishing Jurgen Kunzel. Though the Ge rman former World Supermoto star has yet to win in the class, he has been pilingon the points. "Kunzel is going to be right there," Ward said. "I only have maybe an I I-po int lead. If he wins a race and I go down and get sixth, he has the points lead. So it's not a lead that I am comforta ble with at all, especiallyif they have double points in the last race. There's not going to be a lead that I am com forta ble w ith at all. I'm just trying to go as fast as I can at every race and win asmany as I can." For his part, Jurgen Kunzel was quite pleased w ith his performances since coming to Ame rica full-time. "When you make all the time points, points, points, then it is good ," Kunzel said. "[Doug) Henry has lost pointstwo times, and one mistakeis bad when there are onty six races." Rather than getting a shot at Superpole , [urge n Kunzel had to start from row fIVe in the Supermoto main after he suffered a miscue in his Supermoto heat race, stallingand failing to transfer. "I braked with the rear brake , I think, too hard, and I stalled the engine," Kunzelsaid before going on to win his semi and earn a starting spot in the Supermoto final . "I will just have to be on the gas all the time," Kunzel said before the final. "For the first two laps, I willgive my all, and then I will see whe re I am after that." While he did get to take part in Superpole, Chris Fillmore crashed in turn one during his Superpole attem pt and was forced to start on the second row for the final. "I caught my peg on that inside tire, and it flung me aro und and do wn ," Fillmor e said. "I was real bummed because I expected to be on the podium for that too ." The long, drawn out program was not lost on the riders in Nashville. Q ualifying was wra pped up by 3 p.rn., with the riders having to wait until 8 p.rn. before they too k to the track again. There were also delays dunng the night program. "It was just such a long wait for that first race to happen," Micky Dymond said. "It was like five hours from the last time that I had rode, and then to take a 30-minute break from that before riding the Unlimited race ... They run Supercross - well, Clear Channel does, but the AHA is a part of it - and they set a schedule and stick to it there. I'm not going to badmouth the program, though, and I don't know what challenges they've got here." Continued on page 2 J www.cyclenews.com CYCLE NEWS • SEPTEMBER 22, 2004 19

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