Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA Superbike Series ~~ ...... Briefly... Continued 'rom page 21 twin noises]. you know, and on the checkered flag steals it away. And I was like, 'lIh, I'll get it next year.' But it took a little bit longer. It feels great to get the Daytona Rolex. It's one thing that was missing in my souvenir tray, if you will. Finally, I was able to get it. I'm really happy." Obviously, the biggest news of the weekend was the fact that the Daytona 200 was now being run on 600cc Formula Xtreme bikes, with the majority of the lO-riderstrong field mounted on 600cc Supersport machines. Duhamel was asked in the postqualifying press conference if winning the Daytona 200 with the new format would carry the same weight with him as his other four Superbike Daytona 200 wins. "It doesn't make a big difference," Duhamel said. "The classes change, and that's it. Everybody knew it, and people that wanted to participate in the honor of winning the 200 had time to do it. We did it. It's just like that. Superbike, it's the same thing. Some people are not in it, some people are. Some people had a head start in that class. You just jump in and try to do the best you can. Obviously, here we're probably favorites, because we did do the season last year and we are Honda. I feel that winning the 200 would be just the same as winning the 200 any other time. It's still the 200. I'm very hopeful. It's not by any means done just because Igot pole. These guys right here, it's going to be 68 laps. I know we're going to be seeing a lot of each other." Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes broke up the Honda party on the front row for the Daytona 200 when he put the green bike into third behind Duhamel and Jake Zemke and ahead of Kurtis Roberts. "This is still pretty 22 awesome for me, because I rolled out on a bike that, in testing, I might've ridden for 10 laps to kind of help out my teammate [Ben Attard)," Hayes said. "The bike's been just so good. I never realized how hard the superbike was to ride. And then I jumped on that 600, and it was just pinned everywhere. It was like, 'Wow, this is cool! I've kind of missed this.' The bike's just been good right off the bat. We really haven't done very much to it. I didn't even ride the whole qualifying session. We went out there and did the best I thought we could do with the bike, and there's not really much else to do. We've got a good race bike, I think." Michael Barnes is assuming a new title this year. The veteran Floridian will be tutoring a pair of young Venezuelans who will join Barnes in racing the Formula USA Superbike and Sportbike Championships, along with selected AMA events. "The main focus is to do Formula USA with the young Venezuelan boys [Armando Ferrer and Victor Chirinos]," Barnes said. "Just try to get them as much track time and competition as possible." Barnes said the team would do Daytona, Laguna Seca and the East Coast AMA rounds, "whatever our schedule and budget and time allows." Barnes will not ride the Prieto Racing Suzuki SV-650 in any more F-USA Thunderbike races, despite a dominant performance at Daytona. "It was kind of one-off for my buddy [Steve Servis], who got injured down at Homestead." Barnes dedicated the race, and gave the winnings, to Servis. Yamaha Canada's Pascal Picotte wasn't impressed by the new Daytona layout. Picotte, who was seeing the track for the first time during Wednesday practice, was still learning it when the checkered flag fell in Thursday's Supersport race. "Even if I do get used to it, I'm nev~r going to like it," he said. MARCH 23, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS '" like the old much better. I think it puts a better racing purpose to it as well. If you get behind a slow rider or if something happens that someone slows down in front of you, you lose touch with everybody. Right away. The game is over right there." Like most every Daytona first-timer, Australian Brent George had never seen anything like it. "I didn't know what to expect," the 23-yearold Corona Extra EBSCO Media Suzuki rider said. "It's definitely weird. It's a lot more exciting than anything else I've ridden on. It's challenging going around there. It's hard to get everything working for the track." The gforces of the 3 I-degree banking plastered George into the gas tank. "The banking, you can't move your body; you're pretty much squashed against the bike," he said. "You don't have much say in where you put your body. It's definitely a different experience for sure." The track was new, as were the tires. "I've never ridden on Dunlop slicks, and I've never ridden on different stuff like this. Everything's new and learning." And George was hobbled by a lack of power. The team was forced to ride its 2004 G5X-R IOOOs, since the 2005s arrived too late to make the race. "From what I've been told, my 2004 model is more than 10 horsepower down on the 200S models. Off the turns, I noticed it. Towards the end ofthe race, I was behind [Steve] Rapp, and he was just leaving me off the turns, like disappearing. Through the tight stuff, it wasn't too bad. I could catch up and make a bit of ground on a lot of people. As soon as we started opening up, they'd disappear again. That was the main drama, the fast parts, and off the tums they were pulling away. I'm sure comer speed it wasn't much different." George did have a mishap crashing in the chicane. '" was still learning everything as we went on," George said. '" had a little mishap in practice. Just lost the front in the chicane. It was in Superbike practice, and Superstock qualifying was up straight away. So we had to jump on the spare bike. We didn't have time to get the spare bike together yet. I missed a little bit of qualifying, so that was more time wasted that we didn't need." Despite the adversity, George came ninth, and first '04 model, in the very competitive Superstock race. "We came out pretty well. Hopefully, the Superbike race we can improve again. I was still learn· ing the track at the end. The other guys have got days and days of testing. We've only had limited time on the track. With the rain, we missed some sessions. I'm sure we could do a lot better if we'd done a lot more laps around here." The difference between the haves and the have-nots in both the Daytona 200 and the Daytona Superbike National were fairly close. The slowest Superbike qualifier was 9.543 seconds off Mat Mladin's pole time; the slowest Formula Xtreme bike was 9.022 seconds off Miguel Duhamel's pole time for the 200. Tommy Hayden's Supersport win was the 12th of his career, moving the Kawasaki rider into a tie with Aaron Yates for third on the all-time Supersport win list. Miguel Duhamel is well clear of those behind him with 41 Supersport victories to' his credit. Michael Jordan Motorsports' Montez Stewart suffered a broken lower leg in the Superstock race on Thursday. Stewart's foot slipped off his footpeg through the fast kink that is turn two and he ran over his own foot, breaking his tibia.

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