Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 24 JUNE 18, 2013 and replaced the nose oil coolers with a single big cooler mounted in the tail section of the bike. "It took time to get used to, it felt different," Duhamel said of the completely reconfigured Suzuki. "At first things weren't working well, but we kept working all four days [of testing] and the set-up just got better. I knew we were headed in the right direction, but the team got us there a lot faster than I figured we could." The hard work by Yoshimura combined with Duhamel's constant racing paid off. In a special "Race for the Pole" the AMA held for the Topeka event, Duhamel was encouragingly third fastest, behind only the incredibly sorted Muzzy Kawasakis of Chandler and Russell. The final was held under a blazing sun with temperatures in the high 90s. When the green flag dropped on the 24-lap National, Duhamel was right there. He ran second, sandwiched between the Kawasaki's of Chandler and Russell, as that trio pulled away from the rest of the field. The Kawasakis were on Dunlops and the bikes were simply planted through the turns. Duhamel, on the other hand, was sliding all over the place trying to keep pace with the fast green machines and was quickly wearing out his Michelin slicks. "The Kawasakis had straight-line speed on me," Duhamel explained. "And I pushed so hard on the brakes and through the turns to keep up with them that I really thought it was over. I could tell Doug's [Chandler] bike was way more stable and he was leading without a lot of effort." But then two things came into play – lapped traffic and the series championship. As the leading trio started hitting ever increasing lapped riders, things got trickier. Chandler had a close call trying to get around a couple of riders and nearly rode off the track. He needed only a decent finish to clinch the championship and prior to the race said he was going to play it conservatively, but his bike set-up was so good that he wasn't pushing hard at all and still leading the race. So when things started turning dicey in the closing laps, Chandler switched back P119 to championship-winning mode. With nine laps to go Duhamel saw his opening. Coming upon a group of riders he ran inside Chandler going into a turn to force his hand. Just as Duhamel suspected, Chandler was in no mood to get into a late-race duel and conceded Duhamel the lead. The wildcard was Russell. He was charging hard up from third, and with Duhamel's tires shot, looked to have a great shot at winning, but then came problems. "Miguel passed Doug and he [Chandler] went into cruise mode and I got stuck behind him for a lap," Russell later explained. "I still was able to gain back on Miguel and was close enough to make my move on the last lap. Then I blew turn one and [Jimmy] Adamo got in my way. Miguel got him right away, but I was boxed." Duhamel held on to win a close one over Russell. Chandler dropped back 14 seconds behind the leading pair and did what he wanted to do – he clinched the 1990 AMA Superbike Championship. For Duhamel, his first AMA Superbike win was a satisfying one, since he did it coming back from injury and working doubly hard to get back to racing condition. And he was victorious on a bike that most had been written off as non-competitive. Duhamel was uncharacteristically quiet after the race in near heat exhaustion, but in spite of being totally wiped out he still had a big smile on his face. "When I got in front I had to double my concentration," Duhamel said. "But 24 laps in heat like this, running against guys like Chandler, well it feels great just to run with them." The Duhamel/Chandler rivalry would renew several years later. After both riders did stints in Grand Prix racing they had epic AMA Superbike Championship battles in both 1996 and '97, both of which went down to the final race. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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