Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

I've banged my head so many times since then, I've forgotten what it felt like. I got into the first corner really well, but I didn't know what to expect, so I just relaxed and I thought, 'If these Suzuki boys go screaming past, I'm going to try and follow them.' That was my cunning plan. But unfortunately, Mat was too quick. Everybody warned me that Mat would go really quickly in the beginning, and he did. I got caught with my pants down a little bit, but I couldn't have stayed with him this weekend I don't think anyway." Yoshimura Suzuki's Ben Spies put his GSX-R I000 into Victory Lane with a charging ride that made up for a poor start. Spies muffed the start but carried on, fighting through to get to the rear of teammate Aaron Yates in the closing stages. Then he was able to turn his quickest lap of the race and he drafted past the Georgian on the run to the flag. "It was a pretty hectic race," Spies said. "We got off the line really bad and had to play catch-up a little bit, and I wasn't riding all that well for the first few laps. Toward the end of the race, I saw that I was catching Aaron [Yates] a bit and got down in the 39s with about three or four to go and ran him down. I just sort of sat on him and waited and drafted around him. First podium in the second Superbike race... you want to win, but you've got to be realistic." Though they weren't overly impressive during practice and qualifying, the factory Hondas were much better come race time, and the pairing of Jake Zemke and Miguel Duhamel were in the thick of things in the battle for third place before both of them were badly balked by traffic in the chicane. From there, they raced each other to the flag, with Zemke coming up almost a second ahead of Duhamel. Michael Jordan Motorsports' Jason Pridmore did his best with a bike that wasn't working well, the Californian making a solid debut with the new team to finish seventh, one spot better than M4 Emgo Suzuki's Geoff May, last year's top privateer. Kurtis Roberts was Signed late by Erion Racing, and the team only got one day of testing in on the CBR IOOORR. Couple that with the fact that Roberts was extremely rusty, and you could see that they weren't overly surprised with their ninth-place finish. Tenth place, meanwhile, went to Pridmore's teammate Steve Rapp. While Ducati team members could smile with Hodgson's performance, they could only scratch their heads with Eric Bostrom's. Bostrom struggled all week with a lack of front-wheel grip on the Ducati and could only muster a disappointing I Ith in the race. Usually riders all but kill their championship hopes in the Daytona 200, but this year's shortened version kept attrition to a minimum. Of the top men, only Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes failed to finish, his ZX-IO coming to a smoky stop early in the race. Hodgson managed to put his Ducati out front as the pack entered turn one at the start of the 44.25-mile race, but his lead was short-lived. Yates came by first, with Mladin qUickly follOWing suit. Yates looked to be trying to make a break as he wicked it up straight away, but Mladin would have none of it. Yates would lead lap one, but the rest of the laps belonged to Mladin. The Australian would put his head down, drop his times into the I:39 range and pull away. Once he got his gap to the 3-second mark, he backed it down, maintaining that cushion to the finish. Then he gave full credit to his new GSX-R I000. ''The bike is amazing - the best motorcycle j've ever ridden," Mladin said. "Suzuki has done some hard work on the superb ike. We've got some testing to do, and funnily enough, we're still just running old settings from last year's bike, the suspension and that, and this chassis is quite different. We've got six or seven days [of testing] coming up, and we're looking forward to that and looking forward to Briefly... Tommy Hayden earned pole for the Pro Honda Oils Supersport race in an abbreviated and crowded (64 riders participated in the one session) 35-minute qualifying session on Thursday morning, the Kawasaki rider lapping at I:43.511 after Wednesday's scheduled session was scrapped due to wet conditions. After sleeping on it on Wednes- day night, AMA Pro Racing changed its mind on Superstock and Supersport qualifying - in the process tossing out the supplemental regulations for the opening rounds of the championships at Daytona International Speedway. FollOWing Wednesday afternoon's rained out Supersport and Superstock qualifying session, AMA Pro Racing announced that the grids for Thursday's races would be set by the supplemental regulations. The first qualifier was last year's points, followed by pre-entries, post-entries, and an option to field past champions and others. lost one of our riders [Damon Buckmaster] because of it. That's one of the reasons why we don't like to do that stuff is because it puts you at more of a risk. Some of our guys took that risk and were very careful with it. I think Damon was one of those, and he was on his own when it happened, but it happened. You're trying to manage all the costs and the track time and do the best job you can for the fans and your team ... the best options out there. I can't speak for anybody else, but I know what we're thinking, and I'm going to stand behind our riders 100 percent. When they come off the track, win or lose, there's nothing to talk about when it comes to track time and that sort of thing." McCarty and his riders weren't too pleased with the AMA's decision to run the Thursday morning Superstock and Supersport practice sessions as qualifying sessions after earlier stating that the starting grid would be based When the AMA decided to change the qualifying process, no one was benefited more than Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates. If grid positions were based on the supplementary regulations. Yates would have start- ed the race from the seventh row. With Thursday morning's session being changed to a qualifying session, Yates put his new GSX-R 1000 on pole position. He then went out and finished second in the race. There was a bit of controversy when both Kawasaki and Yamaha entered the Daytona 200 and the Superbike races with no intention of doing the two races. Instead, the entries were filled just to get their riders more track time for Superstock and Supersport. "We came to the CCS race the weekend before because Jamie Hacking was injured and he got absolutely no track time at Daytona or any other earlier tests," Yamaha team manager Keith McCarty explained. "I think he got two days with the rain and his injuries. We made a decision to do the race the weekend before so he could get on the track. Of course, once we did it with one guy we needed to let everybody else do it. So we came down here. In the process of doing that, we got wind that Kawasaki had entered the Formula Xtreme class and Superbike class. For us, that's one of those deals where we're going to get down here and our guys are going to get all wound up because they're not getting the track time. So we were kind of forced to do it. There's no rule against it. Not that we wanted to do it, but we wanted to ensure that our guys had equal track time to whoever they have to race against. There you have it. With the rains, we did what we had to do to give our guys a chance to win." What of the so-called gentleman's agreement that this sort of thing wouldn't happen? "There has been a lot of discussions at a lot of AMA meetings because all of us would rather not have it happen because it's expensive, number one, and it's not about how much you get, it's really about everybody getting the same amount," McCarty said. "Maybe they [Kawasaki] took it as us coming to CCS that we were going to get a one-up on them. But for us, it was just about getting a guy on the track that hasn't been on the track. We had to do something for him. We felt that was the best way to do it. It wasn't a perfect scenario because we on points from last year's series. It was the timing of the decision that hurt the most as the team found out just prior to going on track that things had changed. '"I'm not sure why we couldn't make that decision last night," McCarty said. "I was in my room when I heard they issued a press release that said this would only be a practice session and qualifying would be based on last year's points. Whatever the decision, it's a decision and that's good enough. To turn it around, I think that's what really angers everybody. If you couldn't make that decision last night, what did it today? I wasn't asked. We weren't involved in it. The ripple effect that happens to us is a tough thing to deai with." Yoshimura Suzuki's Mat Mladin earned pole position for Saturday morning's AMA Superbike National, the Australian lapping at 1:38.232 - the fastest lap ever turned on the newly configured racetrack. Miadin led a front row of two teammates, Ben Spies and Aaron Yates, and Ducati Austin's Neil Hodgson, though Hodgson outpaced Yates for third on the grid. When he came into the pressroom for the postqualifying press conference, Mladin was quick to quip about the Rolex watch that goes with winning poie for the Daytona 200. "Do Iget the watch? Oh, that goes to the minibike race." The minibike race is what Mladin has been calling the Daytona 200 ever since the AMA and Daytona opted to change the format to Formuia Xtreme with 600cc machinery. Mladin went on to discuss his qualifying session, his pole position being the 38th of his AMA Superbike career. It also earned him the first championship point of the season. "It went good," Mladin said. '" guess the first thing, as you said, we have a great motorcycle this year, and to have three Suzukis on the front row is amazing. It just goes to show the strength of the Suzuki, and what Suzuki have given to us for this year's race season. I think you're going to see a lot more of that up at the top. My lap times were good. I couldn't have done a better lap. A 38.2 [I :38.2] was alii had. I had a little bit of help from Neil [Hodgson]. I got a little bit of a draft. I definitely got a few tenths freebie there. So, it was a good lap for us, and it's nice to get the pole at the first race. I look forward to getting the race done with on Saturday, and get out and do some more testing and sort this motorcycle out a Continued on poge 21 CYCLE NEWS • MARCH 23, 2005 19

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