Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Oayt;.ona Beach, FL . March 12. 2000 AMA,/Chevy Trucks Superbike Series Round 1 : Daytona International Speedway the thing a little too much, and the clutch slipped a lot, and I went ahead and dumped the clutch; it just kept slipping," Yates explained. "I was like, 'What the hell?' I let off and got back on - it kind of slipped more. I was hoping it wasn't going to be a problem. It wasn't a problem through tie faster. We were right together whenever I blew the chicane. I just caught up the last lap and passed him at the finish. We got some points, and it's a good start to the year and the first time on this bike." Bostrom was hoping for better in his Team Green debut. He suffered the race, but I ended up getting behind a few guys on the start, and we got scrapping back and forth and lost a bunch of ground on the top four from a lack of grip. "In the end we were way more hooked up than with the first two tires," Bostrom said. "Before, I just had no entry grip and no acceleration grip. I couldn't flick it in because the rear would step around. It made it difficult. I couldn't guys. After a couple of laps, I was able to get by them and try to make that ground up - they were going good. I was really too far back to try and hang with them." Rapp ended up a rather lonely sixth on the Vance [, Hines Ducati. "It was good," Rapp said. "I thought for awhile I was going to pull go in as hot as I wanted to, and I couldn't accelerate as hard as I wanted to - especially on the parts, the entries onto the bankings. It was frustrating. I also screwed up the final pit stop by not getting the bike in neutral - that cost us about five seconds." Filling the top 10 was HarleyDavidson's Pascal Picotte and Competition Accessories' Larry Pegram. One was happy to have finished, the other expected more. "I had fun, actually," Picotte said. "I couldn't get the traction like those guys had, especially going onto the banking - the first banking. It was tough for me to hang with those guys because first of all, we were down on top speed, and if you can't get a drive out of the corners, you're screwed. So I tried hard for the first 10-12 laps, then after that I couldn't do much with them. We had our first pit stop, off a third or a fourth. The middle stint, I was passing Miguel [DuHamel], [Aaron] Vates and [Doug] Chandler easy. I don't know what happened in the last stint. I know Chandler went to a softer tire, and I don't know what Yates and Migl)el did, but they definitely pulled. My bike started running bad towards the end, backfiring and spluttering. I think they just startec! going quicker because my lap times pretty much stayed the same. I'm happy. Sixth • isn't so bad for our first race and for Daytona. I think this will be our worst track. The Ducati is no better around here than when I rode the Suzuki, got out of there, and ended up being with Larry [Pegram]. I was enjoying that. I wasn't by myself; I wasn't lone- really. I'm looking forward to getting to Sears Point." Another battle that went to the end was the one between Yamaha's Tommy Hayden and Eric Bostrom, in his debut on the factory Kawasaki. In ly out there. Larry was about the same speed that I was doing, except that his bike was way faster on the banking, so we were able to do a good lap time. Until he started slowing down. At that time, I just decided to go for it and do the best I could. Then the electric shifter started mis- the end, it went to Hayden. "I'm not really happy, but I'm not totally disappointed, I don't guess," Tommy Hayden said. "I blew the chicane twice, and it really killed me. I firing. I had to flip the switch off and just short-shift it actually at about 10,000 rpm because I had like 40- did it early, kind of lost though, and I did it at the end to with 1.0 laps to go. It felt pretty good the whole race. My times were pretty consistent. I just needed them to be consistently a lit- S MARCH 22, 2000' cue I something seconds on Larry at that point." e neVU's (Above) Although they weren't together much the entire race, Miguel DuHamel (17) and Doug Chandler (1) found themselves together at the end. Chandler just managed to beat the defending race champion to the line for third place. (Right) Troy Bayliss was the only other rider in the field capable of running Hayilen and Mladin's pace. He did so until crashing out of the race in tum six. At least a portion of Dunlop honch Jim Allen's graying beard can likely be attributed to being a tire technician who visits Daytona International Speedway at least twice a season. High speed generates high heat, and there are no higher speeds than at Daytona. It's a tire technician's worst nightmare. "During the race, you're on edge the whole time," Allen said on Sunday morning, prior to the Daytona 200. "At the moment it's not so bad, but during the race your guts are always in an uproar. During practice you're trying to evaluate, look at all the specifications, you're analyzing tires and there's a lot going on. This race, as an entity, for sure is the most stressful race." Not only do Allen and the rest of the Dunlop crew have to worry about rider safety, they also have to listen to a myriad of complaints throughout the week about a lack of grip. Riders want grip, and it's a compromise to try and provide that grip when it comes to getting the tire to last at Daytona. "The biggest complaint is no grip," Allen said. "It's Daytona. It's just not easy here to get the thing to go the distance and have grip. They come out of turn one, ar

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