Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

needed to and gave us a really good motorcycle , and it's nice to win the championsh ip." T he c ham pionship seemed less se cur e aft e r D uham e l to o k double wins on the high-speed Ro ad America circu it . Back at the Yosh shop , engine b uilder Henry Yukota was hard at it lo o k ing for horsepower, wh ich he found . Before long the Suzuki was closer to the Hondas, though ne ve r their equal in top-end speed . " Fro m Daytona to now we're probably up about 2.5 percent [in power]: ' Mladi n's crew chief Peter Doyle sa id. " Yo u expect that if you're working constantly and know how to test products. It's not as q uick in a st ra ight line still, b ut it 's close . We su ffer in some a reas . Definitely on fast t racks yo u are lim ited if you're going to run sixth gear - lim ite d to what you can do out o f the turns. In the t hick of t he powerband , we're clo se." D uham e l to o k control of race two mu ch sooner, on t he 10th of 28 laps . Then he was off, quickly b uild ing a le ad t hat woul d grow to 7.318 second s at th e e nd o f t he 63 -m ile ra ce . The ra ce -wi n ning ti m e of 4 0 minutes, 38 . I I seco nds e clipsed Nicky H ayd en's two -year-o ld mark 4 0:5 7.9 41. D uham e l thought he might have ha d a suspect rear tire in t he first one, and the team also made a mi nor sus pension change for race two. "The first race, I felt fo r su re I had a badge of honor from the Ice Capades because I w as slipping, sliding everywhere, going in, coming out," he said . " It was really a handful until I got the bike straight up and down. In the second race, it w as qu ite a bit better. I was out there and just trying to manage traffic and go as fast as I could. I d idn't sweat as much in t he second race , an d I just really fe lt really in contro l." Yates completed h is be st weeken d of the year with another second, t he pair of runner-ups jumping him fro m eighth to sixth in the c hampionsh ip. "T h is race here, I d idn 't have nothing for him ," Yates sa id of D uham e l. "He was on the gas. It looked like his bike was w o rking pretty well." Bostrom's third was his fourth in a row, th is one at a d istance spanning three seconds to Yates. "W he n Miguel's on, he 's hard to beat, a nd Miguel ran a fantastic race today, and Aaron also," Bo st ro m said . "The se guys, they just had us beat today." Mladi n turned t he fastest laps of the race after serving his stop and go . From 24th o n the fourth lap, he was up to 19t h on lap five , t hen 14 t h on lap six and I I t h on lap se ve n. So it went u ntil he was in fifth o n t he 22nd lap, afte r Lanzi dro pped out, and by Laconi for fo urt h on lap 26. He came within le ss than five seco nds o f t he po d ium . "Trying to ge t back on t he podi um and m issed o ut by a few seconds, " Mlad in sa id . " But t ha t's alright. I was a long w ay back but rode as hard as I cou ld ." Laconi was next, by himself, with Hayes nearly 30 seconds back in sixth . Coro na Extra EBSC O Media Suzuki's Marty Craggill got the better of C ycle City's Mike Smith and Prie to Racing's Geoff May fo r seventh. Roadracingworld.com's Jeremy Toye w as 10 t h. eN 5t.artline Fia§co The start of Sunday's second Superbike race was a dangerous fiasco that somehow didn't tum lethal. It began with Mat Mladin jump ing the start and advancing at least 20 feet before coming to an abrupt stop. "Co uld n't see the light. just the sun ," he said . " I just tried to guess the start because I couldn't see if the light was red or green. And I went to on e , and I'm waiting and waiting and time to go . One would believe the AMA would have stopped it, but they made one of their stellar decisions again and let all those people go when someone was sitting there in neutral." Miguel Duhamel was sitting next to Mladin on the front row, having earned the pole position . "That was the biggest jump in the history of the AMA besides Nicky's [Hayden] at Road America," Duhamel said. ''At least he got the stop and go and he kept going. I thought for sure he would pull in and call it a day. It was dangerous. I th ink they should have red-nagged it, stopped everybody, put him in the back . Who knows if he was going to stall it, if he had a clutch problem? I think there was a little bit of confusion from all of us. There was a good five seconds of, 'W hat do we do now?' Then they went green . Man, it was a little halrball . When I took off I thought for sure the red nag was going to come out." Josh Hayes was on the second row behind Mladin and said it was a "c1usterf"$ #.'· When Mladin started backing up , Hayes thought. "Okay, they're going to let him come back to the spot and then start the race , and then they start the race . Once I saw the board go green and people started going by me , I guess it's time to go. At some point they had held it long enough to go ahead and say, 'Okay, wa it a minute - we're going to start this over: Put him on the back row or just make him come in and do a stop and go regardless." Instead there was a brief delay and AHA starter Bobby Lemming threw the green light while another AMA official on the ground waved the field forward . "Probably the best decision wasn't taken in that incident ," AMA road race manager Ron Barrick said. ''A better decision would have been to delay to allow him to get his bike back into position, help him get his back into position so that everybody's set, then set the race and then inflict the penalty for jumping the start. That would have been a better solution to the problem. In the future we'll make sure that happens. " I Briefly... Continu ed 'rom page J5 All four Yamaha riders will be back in 2005 , though what they'll be riding hasn't been decided, that according to Yamaha team manager Keith McCarty. "Th e whole thing is a questio n," McCarty said about whether they'd re join the Superbike class, move to the Daytona-friend ly Formu la Xtreme or continue to focus on Supersport and Superstock - the title that was won by Aaron Gobert on Saturday. Among the factors in the decision are te levision exposure , D aytona itself, how many different machines to bring to the races, etc . "There are so many vari- ab les that matter, It becomes a difficult deci sion," McCarty said. As for when the deci sion will be made - "the sooner you make it the better," he said. McCarty also said that Yamaha's recent deci sion to fund the $2 millio n worth of tra ck improvem ents at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca w ou ldn't affect the race team. "Totally separate budge t," he said. Th e 2005 U,S, GP is an "o pportunity fo r Yamaha as muc h as for our race fans to have a great promotional event," he said. H e pointed out t hat Yamaha backed the U.S. GP in its previous incarnation. Austra lian Ben Attard will stay in the U.S, for an extra week to ride the Att ack Kawasaki ZX-I ORR in the third annual Toyota 200 at Willow Springs Internatio nal Raceway on October 17. Attard w ill team with Attack's Josh Hayes, the de fend ing champion of the race . "It' s on my way home," said Attard, whose visa expires on O ctober 31. Attard was contacted about three weeks ago by Attac k Kawasaki team owner Richard Stanboh. "Richard [Stan boli) gave me the opportunity. I think it's a great opportunity, Attac k seems to be a really good team. Hopefully we can go one-two." Attard faces a few ob stacles. He 's never ridden the Kawasaki and he's never been to Willow Springs. Friday's three practice sess ions w ill be his first ever at the Rosamond track. Wh at he knew abo ut it was that it was "o ut in the desert," adding that he hadn't seen any of the tracks he's been racing the Corona Extra EBSCO Med ia Suzukis o n th is year, As for the big Kawasaki, "It' s got two wheels," he said. The postpone me nt of the original VIR date meant that Yamaha's Aaron Gobert had to resc hed ule his wedding date and place. Instead of marry ing fiancee Melanie Riley on October 6 o n Hamilton Island, o ff the Great Barrier Reef, the couple w ill wed o n Oc to ber 30 in a park under the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Th e reception will follow at a nearby yacht club. Many o f the 300 guests went to Ham ilto n Island on the weekend of the wedding because the ticke ts were nonrefundable. Gobe rt will head home after the VIR race but plans to re turn to be honored at the AMA banquet in LasVegas on November 12. There's a Yamaha test the following week at Californ ia Speedway, then the Yamaha team media day in Southern Californ ia at the beg inning of December, All of which means a postponed honeymoon. "We 've got a credit," Riley said. "We might get a chan ce to go for a honeymoon. www.cyclenews.com Empire Racing's Lee Acree was hobbled afte r banging his left knee on the curbi ng exit ing turn one. Th e North Caroli nian, who cons iders VIR his home t rack, had to leave the track early on Saturd ay afternoon to seek med ical help in Danville. But what he found wasn't com fort ing, and he returned to the track to have it wrapped by a physical therapist. The injury was enough to knock him o ut of the Superbike class, but he was able to qual ifyand race his Suzuki GSX· R6oo , Hooters Suzuki's John Haner had a tank slapper during Friday's promoter practice that was so violent it pulled muscles and tendons in his left wrist. T he Texan tried practicing on Satu rday, but the pain was such that he withdrew from the Superb ike and Superspo rt classes after only a few lap s. '" had a violent headshake , had the bars almost jerked o ut of my hand s and I almost fell off t he bike go ing down the straightaway," Haner said. "This hap pe ned on Friday, midaftern o o n, and to w ard t he end of the day my wris t started hurti ng a little bit. I didn't th ink too much of it, tho ught it was just a little strained , no big dea l. I went to the phar macy and got a wri st brace, th o ught it wou ld be okay. I got on the bike t his morni ng, an d it started to hurt so bad that I was dreading com ing into the corners w ith the clutch. It was like somebody was stab bing me in the arm . I coul d make a w arm up lap and two hard laps, and after that it started to mess with my mind, where I was just dreading getting off the gas, like you didn't even want to shut off the throttle to pull th e clutch in and start making your downshifts." Yamaha's Jaso n DiSalvo and teammates Aaron Gobert and Jamie Hacking were back at VIRtwo weeks after taking part in a CCS race. The track time was beneficial. more for the time itself rather than for gaining setup know ledge . The riders had been off since Labor Day, so instead of the five-wee k layo ff the rest of the field had , they 'd only been away for two w eek s. "It was just a big help," DiSalvo said after winning t he Superstoc k race. "Like I said [on the podium], I can't believe t he ot her factory teams didn't go it, so a big heads -up to Keith McCarty and Tom Halverson for thinking abo ut it ." DiSalvo also credited t he AMA for the way it handled the start o f the Repso l Superstock race . Hoote rs Suzuki's Eric Wood had crashed in tu rn five on th e warmup lap, soiling the track. Th e t rack was cleaned , but no t e no ugh according to Star Motorcycle School's Jason Pridmore. Fo llow ing the warm up lap, Pridmo re went to the front of t he grid and signaled to AHA officials to call off the start, which they did. The track was furt her cleaned and the race went off without a hitch . "Th e AH A, too, I think they han died that situation in the beginn ing o f the race really well," DiSalvo said. "Thanks to them for everyone keeping their heads and staying calm : ' Daytona International Speedway is about to begin constru ction on the reworked infield with the input from the Continued on page 20 It CYCLE NEWS • OCTOBER 20, 2004 17

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