Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

MvOwN 17 RACE Miguel Duhamel 5th/4th American Honda's Miguel Duhamel came the closest of the Honda men of matching the pace of the Suzukis and Neil Hodgson's Ducati. In Saturday's race, it appeared as though the French Canadian was making inroads into catching the Spies/Hodgson battle at midrace, but the gap just sort of shrunk and grew, shrunk and grew. "It was one of those races where Ijust worked as hard as I could the whole race," Duhamel said of Saturday's race. "I mean I was really trying. Isaw exactly what you're seeing I'm going to catch them next lap, I'm going to catch them. I'd make some time, then make a litde mistake and drop back and come back on them. Ijust wanted to get up there, and Iwanted those guys to start messing around a little bit so Icould get back into that draft. Some areas of the racetrack Iwas pretty fast, but Iwasn't able to get around, get close to them. It was unfortunate. With fIVe laps to go, I really put my head down. Iwas like, 'I tell you, I'm going to try to catch Neil.' And the tire said, 'I don't think that's a good idea.' So Istarted sliding along and the bike got to be quite a bit more of a handful that I thought it should be. Ijust setded in and brought it home for fifth place, which is not bad." On Sunday, Duhamel fared even better, narrowly missing out on the podium after a late scrap with Spies. "We iearned from yesterday:' he said. "Yesterday, I had no rear grip going into the comer. Yesterday was really, really bad. I think the temperature and the winds were favorable. I think today's race was a faster pace. Taking that into consideration, I think we still had a better bike today. It was a little bit better, but it's still not where it needs to be for sure. My risk factor is too high out there. I feel pretty satisfied coming in and making the whole race, considering the slides I had to deal with out there. The bike's getting better. We were three seconds off at the beginning of the year. Now we're about a second off." 98 jake Zemke DNF/DNF Following Saturday's race, Erion Honda's Jake Zemke still didn't know what happened to his Honda CBR IOOORR that knocked him out of the race after just 10 laps. ''I'm not quite sure yet:' Zemke said on Saturday. "Something electrical, I believe, because my primary, actually, on the warmup - something didn't feel quite right on it. I was like, 'Well, I'm not going to pull in the pits right now,' because I knew my second bike wasn't set up the same as my primary bike. There wasn't enough time to get both bikes set up the same. I wanted to race the bike Iwas on. We had that red flag, and I came in. I'm like, 'Hey, guys, this thing, something's weird with it.' And so they download all the information. They're looking for it. They can't find what the problem is. They actually were able to change the shock to the secondary bike before I went back out. I don't know... we got a few laps in and the thing did the same thing. We've got something in there. I think they call them gremlins. There's something in that, and they're looking right now trying to figure out what it is, and hopefully they can find it before tomorrow." On Sunday, the "gremlins" were there again and Zemke failed to finish. "Same thing as yesterday," he said. "Something's amiss in our package there, and it's not very happy. It's probably starting right from the get-go, and the problem is it's progressively worse and worse. The guys are looking at the data and just going, 'Well, we see what you're talking about, but we don't understand it.' I thought everything was going to be okay this moming. Uke Isaid, it progressively gets worse. So we never really did that many laps this moming because we're still trying to search for a setup. So it was kind of like three or four laps, in-out, if the problem was there, you're not really feeling it." 43 jason Pridmore 6th/DNS Clutch problems on Saturday were a bit frustrating to Jordan Motorsports' Jason Pridmore, but it didn't stop him from putting his GSXRI000 in sixth place after getting the best of a batde with teammate Steve Rapp and Austin Ducati's Eric Bostrom. "We've been having a problem with our clutch when we have ran that thing [the superbike] as little as we have this year:' Pridmore explained. "We thought we had it figured out this moming, but in the race from the first lap on, it wasn't good at all. I let the clutch lever all the way out, and it still engages really bad, It's like clutch lever out, on the brakes really hard, and everything should be fine, but it chatters super bad. It's all clutch related. It's actually smoother for me to downshift from fourth to third with no clutch at all. This morning we went fast and it was good, but in the race Iwas like three-quarters of a second slower than this moming. But sixth is good. Our bike is by no means a superbike yet." Pridmore crashed on Sunday moming and wasn't able to start the second Superbike race (see Brieflly...). 32 Eric Bostrom Ducati Austin's Eric Bostrom hasn't had a good start to his season. That continued in race one at Barber, and he eventually finished a disappointing eighth. ':Actually, things are better:' Bostrom said. "I rode pretty poorly at the end of the race. Igot off the line and slipped the clutch too hard, and then the clutch was slipping and Iwas struggling. The bike was working better for the most part. I just didn't ride well enough and we chose the wrong tire. The grip was really funky. This place is frustrating. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and another shot, with another tire. If we could leave now and go to Fontana, I'd be all for it, but I'm also happy that we get another shot at this. Obviously, it's not good to take a hit like this. It's something for us to overcome." But Sunday brought a better result for Bostrom. "Overall, things were better:' he said on Sunday aftemoon. "We're just happy to get out of here, Iguess. I don't know. I just haven't been able to get along with this racetrack on this motorcycle. It's really strange. There's a few tums where I'm as fast as anybody. I'm not going to give any time away. And then there're other tums where everyone just disappears away from me. It's really an enigma, this whole place. We spend more time on the side of the tire than anyone else. That said, Neil's [Hodgson] doing a fantastic job. I need to be doing at least as well as him. He's riding the bike much closer to its limits than Iam. I think Fontana's going to be much better for us. I'm looking forward to getting there." 41 josh Hayes DNF/6th After not finishing at Daytona and not finishing in the first of two races at Barber, Attack Kawasaki's Josh Hayes was thrilled to finally finish a superbike race again. "I'm actually excited to finish a race," Hayes said. "It didn't go too terribly bad. We're still off the pace of where we should be, but Ijust feel rusty. I haven't ridden in a long time, I feel like. I really haven't gotten any quality laps in, and I feel rusty. That race was the most consecutive laps I've gotten in in a long time. I'm pretty happy to finish and glad things finished on a high note for the weekend." 20 Aaron Yates Yoshimura Suzuki's Aaron Yates had an upand-down weekend. Saturday went well with a second-place finish, but tire troubles caused him to pit on Sunday. By the time the crew fitted a new tire, Yates was well down the field. He worked his way up to eighth by race's end. "It was the same tire as yesterday. The bike was pretty unstable. I had one big moment, and the thing flopped out and kicked really bad worse than it had all weekend. After that, it fe~ heavy turning in, and driving off the tums, it just was wiggling. It felt like the tire was going low. It just felt wiggly and squirmy. Iwas trying to decide what to do. Idecided to come in and get a tire. It just took longer to change tires than I was hoping for. They checked the pressure and it was all right. The tire looked fine. They are going to cut it up and look at it. I felt like it was going down so the best thing to do was come in and change it." 15 Steve Rapp 7th/DNF Everything went well for Steve Rapp on Saturday, the Jordan Motorsports rider finishing seventh, behind his teammate Jason Pridmore. On Sunday, things were going even better - until Rapp crashed on the 23rd lap. "The race was going good:' Rapp said. "I was fifth, and Istayed behind Oake] Zemke for the first 10 or II laps until he pulled in. I could run his pace, which kind of surprised me a litde bit since I'm still running a superstock bike. He helped pull me away from some of the other guys. Then Iwas going through the back straightaway before the left right up the hill. Ithink the back end bottomed out while Iwas accelerating. It tried to highside me, but I hung on and it ended up Iowsiding me. That was it. Ifell off."

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