Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

DuHamel (17), Koc ins ki (4 6) and M ladln (1) brawl at the front of the pack. DuHamel won, Mladin finished a c lose sec ond, and Ko cinski went out when his rear tire chunked. down, but I just never was happy with the set-up all weekend ," Hayden said . " G o in g into one I was just foldi ng the fron t a couple of t i m es a n d it d o n ' t t ake m uc h at 170 mph to sca re y o u for t he rest o f that ses sion . It's tough down th er e and I j us t could n 't get the b i k e set up a nyw he re , I wa s spin ning ." So w ith t wo ra c es t o g o , M l a di n stretched h is p o ints lead o v er H ay d en t o 12 , 332 - 320 . Yo sh imura Suzu ki 's Aa r on Ya t e s, s e v enth to d ay afte r c hoosi ng a ha rd re ar t ire , is th ird with 292 . Th e race d id n 't la c k fo r drama . It b e g an with Va nce £, Hine s D u cati ' s J o h n K o cinsk i b ol t in g from the p o le aft er h is lap record in q u alifying and ho ld in g off DuH amel and M ladin . D u Ham el was by o n lap fo u r, th en it w as Kocins ki throug h six w hen th e Duc ati r ider b li st ered a tire and had to p it for a r e p la c em e n t. He was liv id then and not m u ch happier afte r wa rds , and Dun lo p ' s J im Allen was at a loss to expla in the p roblem . "It's like a '9 1 n ightmare all over ag a in ," K o c in sk i sa id of th e yea r he ro d e t he Ma r lboro Yama ha 5 0 0 o n Dunlops, t he y ear Wayne Ra iney won t h e 500cc World Cham p ionship on t he same ti r es . " W e h a d t h e sa me t h in g s h appen in 19 9 1. T hat's what h appen s. B ut we 've got to move on ." Ko c i nsk i s lo w ed in a fa irly slow turn , Not so for h is t eam m ate Steve Ra p p . Rapp ' s r ear ca me apart and lo st chu nk s in th e n ear flat -out turn o ne , a very sca ry propositio n . Some h ow he saved it , b ut t he fl ying t ir e c h unks n ea rl y fla ttened his exha ust un d er th e sea t , cracked the tai l sect ion , a n d im p ac t ed t he shock reser voir . " 1 lean ed it in - I was go ing good throug h t her e - I could go rea ll y fa st through o ne an d t w o , a nd I wa s m ak ing up a lot of t ime on Nic k y [H ayd en] through t he re, " Rapp sa id . " All of a sudden I j us t heard sm ack , a nd the back en d stepped out a li ttle b it and fro m t hen o n I w as j u st t rying to stay o n t he tra ck. " Both D uc atis us ed the same Dun lo p 5 01 rear tha t ev eryon e , except fo r Yates , u sed , so w hy th ey fa il ed w as a m y stery. The most li kely expl a na t io n w as that th ey w er e th e fas te st t h ro u g h tu rn one , th ei r to p speed s p ea king at abo u t 182 m p h , thre e o r f o u r mph b etter th an the Hon da s and Suzu kis . "Th ey w ere h e at -a sso ciated fa il ures and t h ere 's lots of te m p er at u re on the edg e of th e t ire ," Dunlop Road R a c e Co or d inator Jim A ll en said . " T hey probab ly g en erated m o re h eat in th e rea r than an y one else ." Eve n so, All e n said t h at it w as h a rd t o e x p la in h ow K o cin sk i ' s ti re cou l d f a il a f te r o nly six h ot l a p s . " B o t h are a hu g e disa p poin tment to me," he said. A fte r K o c in sk i went out enteri ng t he B u s S t o p turn , it was b et w e e n D u H a m el , Ml adin , and H ac k in g with Mladin taking t he lead on lap seve n fo r t wo laps, b efo re D uH am el blew by on th e front stra ightaway. On lap 11 , Ml a din m ade a nothe r "M y o nly worry w ith Mat, an d it's strong m o v e , t ak i n g D uH a m e l on not reall y j u stifi ed , a lthough w h en h e p assed m e going into three he ki nd of moved over on me , so I wa s kind o f t he i n si d e of turn th re e w ith th e pair nearl y touch i ng , D uH a m e l powered b y on t he f r o n t straig ht on lap 14 and n ever gave u p the l e a d , n o t w o rried that he might try to d o li k e a stuff m o ve and get me off the tr a c k that th ere was an y c u shi o n o f com f o rt. rior, quite a bit fast er : D u H am el said . UfIJODlDUD[fj liOD@ U fIJODl John Kocinski was talking trash. After ta king the provisiona l pol e on Fr iday , Vanc e £, Hines Ducati 's Kocinski predicted he'd break Ben Bostrom 's year-o ld lap record , and he did . More than break it, Kocin ski blistered the threemil e Brainerd circuit in a tim e that no one cou ld come withi n threetenths of a second of appr oachin g. And after he did it, he cl aim ed Yoshim ura Suzuki's Mat Mladin had intentio nally balked him , otherwise he would have gone faster. (See Briefly...) Even so, he'd earned his second pole of the year with a time of 1:35.682, under the previous mark of 1:36 .070 and he put it to old thinking. All year lon g , Kocinski has been wh in ing to anyo ne withi n earshot that the Vance £, Hines Ducati that , in the hands of Anth ony Gobert and Ben Bostrom, won six AMA Superbike Natio nal s, and both legs of the Laguna Seca World Superbike race last year, wasn't up to winning. So, in ty pical Kocin ski fashion, he' s been driv ing the team crazy tryin g to m ake it righ t, up to now with little success. For Brainerd he asked that his front suspension be mad e as close as possibl e to the Du cati he rode in the 1996 World Superbik e Championship . The V£,H team asked that the Ducati factory send over some parts from the 1996 bike , which they did. "We got some old intem al fork parts from the Ducat i factory: V£,H crew chi ef Jim Leonard said. "It' s not easy to find stuff that old ." For Kocinski the difference was pro bably as much psychological as mechanica l, and he was up to speed right off the start. It didn't hurt that he and teammate Steve Rapp 's Ducatis were the fastest on top end thr ough the radar traps . "Basically , I got m y oid bikes back. I got my '96 bik es back ," Kocinski replied when asked about the turnaround. "When I rode for Ducati in '96 I finished thi rd for Ducati in the World Championship, but we had like five mechanical DNFs whi ch basically cost me the world titl e. I won six or seven races on it. The bik e wasn't that bad. When I came in this year to ride the 2000 model, I sent all that stuff back to Italy. They can keep it. They went to the museum and dug out a bunch of the old stuff and sent it here," There was more than a certa in amo unt of hyp erbole in the statem ent. "Does he want the 1996 motor with 16 less horsepower in the rnld -ranqe?" one V£,H mechanic asked. "I j ust want to say I got my bik es back, the whole thing," Kocin ski insisted when pressed on what the changes were. "I wanted the old bikes, the old engineers, everything." Later he added, "The biggest thing is peopl e have to listen to me and get what I need and everyt hing else should be okay. I'm going becau se he kn ew my bike was su pe- to be ready to put everything on the table with all the guys that have finished ahead of me at all of the other races. I'm ready . I'm ready to get it on." Mladin kn ew it would take a specia l lap to beat Kocinski and he didn't have it. Part of the problem was that he'd gotten one bad qualifyin g ti re and he also hit some traffic on his best lap. Still , he was pleased with where he qualified . "We' re satisfied with what we did ," Mladin said. "It' s half a second quick er than we went last year. John' s got a prett y big to pspeed advantage on us from what we've noti ced on all the speedtrap stuff; so to do that by ourselves was .a pretty good lap. I was pretty happy with it. "Thi s mo rni ng we were doin g 36 s with the sam e set- up b ut there's not enough tir es and this afternoon I had to run this morning's tire, the race ti re. Th e race tire' s got like 30 laps on it now which is far more than the race and the last lap before I came in is lik e a 7 .4 with 30 laps on it, So we're pretty happy with that." Th e ma in concern was Am eric an Honda's Nicky Hayde n, and Hayden didn't like the first few very fast turns at Brainerd. He quali fied ninth . "These first few come rs here can really slow a lap ti me dow n if you haven't got it right: Mladin said. Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom won his first Superbike race at Brainerd two years ago aboard a Honda. Last year he strugg led here, but this year he was on the gas. "We're close to the front, but we'r e not on top ," said Bostrom , who qualified on the pole for the Pro Honda Oils 600c c Supersport. "Definitely there m ight m e a few more things to sort out, plus we've got one more shot at it tomorrow mom ing to try to dial the thing up a little bit more. We made good im provements from yesterday to tod ay and there's more im provements to be made. "The bike set-up for here is kind of bizarre any way. I don't know that any other track is lik e this one. It just kind of takes a weird setup. You're on the throttl e for so long leaned over. You have to get the bike set up for that. It's ki nd of all a bit new to us." Then came Rapp, mak ing his first front -row appe arance of the season and the first time the two V£,H Ducati s shared the front row. Rapp adm itted that he isn't adept at finding the proper settings very quickly and spends too mu ch tim e look ing. "Half the time I'm not sure what the bike's doi ng so it takes so m uch longer to get what I need, just bec ause of my lack of experi ence and so many options - so that's my biggest problem," Rapp said. "But it's not the riding, it' s getting the bike to how I like it sooner, that 's where I' m at." From Friday to Saturday Rapp improved his time dram atically, by ma k ing dramatic changes to the bike. ' We m ade a big adjustm ent, but that's the problem, we have to, because we run out of time. We c an't just m ake sm all changes because if we m ake small changes we've got to m ake a bunch of them, so the later it gets in the week and the bigger the changes come and the mo re we change at once, wh ich is bad, you don't want to start changing two thin gs at once." cue' e n e uv s A U G U S T 9 , 2000 7

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