Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128619
lo w 11 s and to ssed in so me 10s n o w a nd th en , and that was p retty much it, " Ha c k in g sa id . The p roblem fo r Yates was a lack of grip i n the rear. The lac k of t ract ion upset the b i k e and it n ever rea lly fel t r ight , a cc ording to Yates . H e hung o n a s long as he c o u ld before giv i n g up th ird and s ett l ing for fourth . Eight seconds ba c k in f ifth came Stev e Rapp , th e V&H Du cati rider c ardi n g h is b est ye t f or the t eam , one better t ha n hi s Daytona fin ish. " T he b ike fel t prett y good and go t a go od s tart a nd didn 't c a r twh ee l dow n th e f ront straig h ta way ," h e sai d . " I n e e d to get a little bi t b ett er , but it was a good s ta rt. I thi n k it was jus t a com b i n atio n of we' re lea rning t he bike a li ttle more every w eekend and D av e [McGrath] learni ng the bik e a l it t l e more . H e did a good job and h e made littl e cho ices as far as tires c o n c e rn e d , just little stuff, so that h elps a lit tle ... Rapp h eld off N icky Ha yden , who tried to come back at him in the late going , end ing up about half a second short in sixth, on e sp o t in front o f h is b rot h er Tommy. T ommy wa s hoping to g et cl oser, earli er , but had b een h e ld up b y Harl ey -Davids on ' s Pas cal Pi c ott e , pa c e , " Picotte said. " T h o s e guys Ha yden in e ighth. Picotte tries to cha se do wn th lrd place finisher Jam ie Hacking. " I j us t c o u l d n ' t match the r a c e who finished fo u r seconds b ehind w ere defin itely a little faste r and I No one was quite sure what was going to happen when final Super bik e qualifying was unleashed late on Saturday aftemoo n, almost Saturday evening . A torre ntial downpou r had blown throu gh the area early in the aftemoo n, and by the time the trac k was dried and the 750cc qualifying was concl uded, it was well past 5 p.m. T im e wasn't the issue, the track was. It would be green and therefore slow, and fast times weren't thought to be in the cards, especia lly since the normally 50 -mi nute session was cut to half an hour. Early on, the times weren't fast. Then the boys got down to business and pole specialist extraordinaire Mat Mladin put in a flyer that would knock provisional pole man Eric Bostrom down a peg. Bostrom struck back, in the end coming just .060 of a second short of taki ng his first-e ver pole. The Yoshimura Suzuki rider's best was a new track reco rd of 1:09 .94 7, under the mark of 1:10 .176 set by Anthony Gobert last year. Both he and Bostrom had eclipsed the mark on Fri day. The time was done with less than nine m inutes to go in the session and it held up. Bostrom did his best with less than five to go , but cou ldn't back it up. "I fully expected a 9.4 or a 9.5 if it didn 't rain, I think that 's what would have been done for sure," said Mladin, who took his third pole of the year. "Yesterday, my lap was 900d, but it really wasn't that crash hot. Defin itely there was another half a second in it, but it didn 't happen ." Mladin said the rain had affected the track. "The lap times were actually a few tenths quicker than yesterday even though they were only a tenth quicker on the clock, but not too bad," he said. His strategy had been to try a totally different bike than he'd set his fast time with . It didn 't work , so he went back to the quicker setup to snare the pole. " Essentia lly, with about 15 m inutes to go in the session, we weren't making any prog ress, we were a half a second off the pace," Mladin said. "It just wasn't good. So we went back to the other bik e with 10 minutes to 90 and put a bun ch of good laps on and we were pretty happy with that. " Bostrom held onto the second fast time with the one hot lap late in the session. He felt the track was slower and wasn't really up to speed when they slipped the qualifi er in the rear of his Kawasaki. "T he trac k and the braking goin9 into one seeme d pretty slippery ," Bostrom said. "I just kind of sat back and went back out there. It felt pretty good so we put on a few laps. Before we put on the qualifier so my head wasn't really into it. I j ust didn 't do quite a good a jo b as I prob ably should have don e. Definitely , lik e Mat said, was turning in th e r e a n d see if the track was slower." Mladin wanted to see Yoshimu ra Suzukis one-two on the 9rid and Aaron Yates nearly obli ged. His time was only .065 of a second behind Bostro m's and well better than his Friday time. "I though t tha t one lap was pretty good, it was a 10.0 ·som e· thing ," Yates said. "Thi s whol e weekend's been li ke a test for us. Every session we've tried a few things on the bik e that I haven't real ly explore d before. We've got the bik e reall y com fortable for me now going around here. We tri ed a different shock righ t th ere. About halfway thro ugh that session with about 20 m inut es to go just to see what it was lik e. It wasn't too bad. It was a little soft and we m ade some clicks on it and it got better. Put the qualifi er in and it was it mad e the shock too soft again and I think if we woul d have had the right set-up we coul d have gone for it for sure." In his fi rst trip to Lou don on a Supe rb ik e, N ic k y Hayd en im prove d his tim e, but only marginally, and he wasn't happy, but con tent "After every qualifier you put on, if you 're not on yo ur head, you always say, 'Yeah. I should have went faster,' .. Hayden said. "I was prett y happy just to stay on the front row. I would just as soon not ran tha t last session. I'm pre tty happy to be on the front row. Tom orrow it's going to be tough . I'm struggling a little bit. I'm not going too fast real consistent. Hopefully, we can get my bike a little bit better tomorrow and hopefully I can just get a good start and hang with the boys and try to go at the end or som ething ." The second row was b ookended by t h e Yamahas of Jamie Hacking and Tommy Hayden. wi th Vance £, Hines D uc at i ' s Steve Rapp and Yosh's Jason Pridm ore in between. In all, there were 23 qualifiers, but the 750cc Supersport crow d started showing up in 15th place with Mazda Chaparra l Su zu k i ' s D am on B u c km ast er o n the fou rth r ow nex t t o Harley -Davidson's Scott Russell. ma ybe t o w a r d th e e n d the y coul d have come back to m e b ecause I c h o o se t he hard t ire. t he 602 . Actu ally it started working a little bi t, b ut to wards the end Ra pp was com ing b a c k to m e a n d Nicky w as com ing b a ck t o m e , so the st rate g y was n' t t hat, except still the VR d o e sn ' t accelerate enoug h . O u t of the corner those guys were strong. I was making a gap going in the c or ne r , tr y to close the ga p on th e brakes and try t o carry a little more sp eed . It's still n ot enough. You can battle w ith those guys , but it's hard to w in the battl e . It's hard to w in the fight. .. Kawasa k i's Doug Chandler fi nished about f i ve seconds beh ind P i cotte after the tw o had battle d most of the wa y , with Picotte g etting b y for good with five l a p s to go . Chandler dlscoyered in the first third of the ra ce that the su spen sio n was fading a n d it wa s a b us i n g his fron t tire. " It j ust really started chatteri ng a lot a nd j ust abused the tire severely ," Chandler sa id. " I tried to stay in fro nt of Pasca l, but I was losing t he front in j ust about every other corner. I f inally 105,t i t i n one and ran wide a n d Tommy got me. I couldn't do nothin g afte r that. " cue I ... n e vv eN s • JUNE 28. 2000 9