Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Briefly... bring the thing home tomorrow now and try to wrap up the championship." In order to win the title, he only had to finish 21 st or better on Sunday. That race was stopped on lap three with Mladin in fifth. The second running wouldn't start as well. "In our second start, I didn't want it to be that bad, but I certainly wasn't going to be first into the first comer," he said. "I was just trying to roll off the line just to make sure that we didn't have to come into the pits or something silly. But it turned out pretty bad." Twenty-first, in fact, ending the first of 25 laps. ':t>.nd then the first couple of laps where interesting going through a few of those lads back there that I'm not used to dealing with," Mladin said. Meanwhile, Yates was on a roll. By the fifth lap, he had a second in hand and doubled it two laps later. Spies was trying to catch up, and he did, but then he had to slow down after feeling a vibration a few laps from the end. Yates won by 6.248 seconds, with Spies second and Hodgson third. "I kind of got in cruise mode out there and started taking it easy there, just conserving in case I got up to plus four or something," Yates said. "I thought, 'Hell, why push hard? Just cruise around.' The tire was starting to feel kind of funny on the right side but still was fine, and I just figured well, you know, I'll save it, and if anything happens towards the end, I'll be able to go. And it turned out that's how it was." The Superbike win was Yates's first of the year and came a few hours after he'd wrapped up the Superstock title. "I wasn't seeing eye to eye with the bike," Spies said. "I was doing the best I could to conserve and get up on the podium. We got into lappers, and I saw Aaron [Yates] coming back to me. And then one lap, he - I think he was behind a group from one all the way to six or seven, and I caught right up to him and then after, I decided I was going to put on a charge and see if I could make it interesting. Came out of [turn] seven and the bike was completely straight up and down and it spun really bad, like way worse than usual. Had a bit of a vibration on the back straightaway, and I just checked up a little bit and looked around and lost a few seconds just to make sure everything was intact and brought it home in second." Spies finished his rookie Superbike season second in points and only off the podium twice in 17 races. Hodgson found his way to podium for the first time Zemke said. "We just ended up going backwards from there and couldn't get 'er going today. There, towards the end, the thing was falling off pretty bad. The bike just wasn't going down the straightaways any more." In the week between VIR and Road Atlanta, Hacking and Spies were both smoked on two wheels by Neil Hodgson. "Neil put us in our place pretty quick," Spies said. TIle spanking came on two wheels, but they were humanpowered. Hodgson, Josh Hayes, and Spies joined the recovering Jamie Hacking at his home on Lake Norman, North Carolina, for a SO-mile bicycle ride between races. Hacking, Hayes, and Spies all had their ultra-lightweight, IS-pound road bikes. Hodgson had a 21pound Schwinn with a chromemoly frame. "He's definitely [one of] the stronger rider[s] I've ever ridden with," Spies said. "Out of the bike paddock, he's the strongest rider for sure." Yamaha is holding a not-very-secret test at Daytona Intemational Speedway following the October 20-23 Formula USNChampionship Cup Series finale, but you didn't hear that from me. That was the response for any number of people in the Road Atlanta paddock. And Yamaha racing boss Keith McCarty didn't make the trip, so no one could speak officially for the team. The two-day test, on October 25-26, will be the first shakedown for the Formula Xtrerne R6s that the team is expected to run at Daytona and beyond. With the American Honda team pulling out of the FX class after Daytona and leaving it to Erion Honda, Yamaha is left as the only factory contesting the class. The team appears to have made the decision to go forward with FX before Honda made the decision to withdraw. since his win in the rainsodden first race at Road America. The Brit was able to run down and pass American Honda's Jake Zemke on the 17th of 2S laps. Zemke had run second and third before his race deteriorated. On the I Ith lap, he swapped ends after running off the tra the top of the hill. Spies got past, signaling the beginning of the end for Zemke. ':t>.nd kind of we were starting to lose traction at that point in the race anyways"," TIle next time Yoshimura Suzuki's Ben Spies and Yamaha's Jamie Hacking face off, someone will walk away, literally. That's because the friends are going head to head, or rather, title to title, on SpeedlV's "Pinks."TIle show's premise is that the combatants face off in a drag race with the winner driving away with the loser's car. But it might not be so dramatic. "It's all fake," Spies said, adding that he knew he was going to lose. "He's got a car that definitely going to beat mine," he said. Hacking will pit his turbocharged 2004 Subaru WRX STI against Spies supercharged 2003 BMW M3. "He actually installed [the supercharger]," Spies said. "We guesstimate 450 horsepower." Spies figures his car will run in the I I-second race with minor changes, "his for sure is in the I Is. He won't smoke mine, but it'll definitely beat it." "That's the whole idea," Hacking said with a laugh. "We tried to get on for this season, but it's not going to happen. So it's going to be for next season. TIle producer's been calling me back and forth. We're trying to figure out where we're going to do it. We're going to kind of find somewhere in the middle, and we'll go, and they'll do it. Originally, they wanted to race cars. They said something about bikes. Maybe we might do two - cars and bikes. Ever since that show's come out, I've been really interested. I'm sure there are a couple of other guys - Aaron [Yates] and Jake [Zemke], he likes to race drag cars. He'd like to get into it, too." ..::w. TIle game of musical chairs didn't end at Road Atlanta, but a few people seem to have found seats. Yamaha's Jamie Hacking is staying with Yamaha Hacking's season ended prematurely with a bicycle accident prior to Road Continued on poge 27 CYCLE NEWS • SEPTEMBER 14, 2005 2S

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