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USA l.rrer.rdrlonGl Ro(ewoy SUFERMOTO raves Yamaha's Mark Burkhart and Red Bull KTM Hl''1C's Bernd Hiemer each scored wins in Supermoto racin8 at Shawano in round th.ee of the AMA championship series. The path to Burkhart's victor/ in the flrst race was made clear when early race leader.lurgen Kunzel and his KTl4 went down in the dirt midway through the race alter starting from pole position. The defending champion's crash reshuffled the running order with Burkhan coming out on top and powering away from Hiemer. Burkhart's Yamaha teammate Doug Henry, a double race winner last year at Shawano, tangled with Troy Lee Honda's Chris Fillmore while trying to avoid Kunzel, resulting in a bent front-brake rotor and a horrible race for Henry- Bernd Hiemer, runner-up in the 2005 Supermoto World Championship, was in total control of race wvo. l'leanwhile, Burkhart's Yamaha developed a sudden tremble midrace causing the first race winner to ride straight off the course and into the stray bales. Henry eager to make up for his abject first race, caught Hiemer but crashed after bumping into the KTM's rear wheel near the end of the flnal lap. Shawano marked Hiemer's debut in AMA Supermoto Championship and the series won't see the German again until the September round at Road America. \ BY TRACY HAGIN PHoros BY Rava,roxo GuNov every lap. Husqvarna's Alex Thiebault fin- ished second and KTM s Leonardo Bagnrs was third. Yamaha's Brandon Currie fell twice trying to make desperate passes to move to the front and finished {ourth Anderson holds a nine-point lead over Thiebault in the Supermoto Lites Championship. "So far I've led every lap, I have not been beaten on a lap," said Anderson. "Obviously, I have a lot ofconfidence right now- But we're not even halfway yet [in the seasonl and there's still plent/ of rac- ing to go." Vy'isconsin's Ben Carlson and his KTM punched back after a messy race at Road America with a wire-to-wire win tn Supermoto Unlimited. Defending Supermoto Unlimited Champion l'4icky Dymond finished second on his KTI'4, again. Dymond looked to be locked in third when he and Husqvarna rider David Baffeleul ran up into a clutch of weary backmarkers plodding through in the dirt section on the final lap. Dymond capital- ized on the opportunity to get around Baffeleuf to take second, demoting the Frenchman to third. KTIY rider John Lewis finished fourth riding with a two- week-old broken left hand. Carlson leads the Supermoto Unlimited Championship with 70 points. Gary Trachy, a first-lap faller today, and Lewis are tied on 50 points. I I I{ew winners at Shawano's Supermoto ruund 26 JUNE 21,2006 . CYCLE NEWS I I I I Round 3 turl 10,2OO5 AMA sup€Fmoto Championship sUP€RMOTO RAC€ ON€ Kunzel topped the four-rider Superpole session held before lunch to claim pole position for the l4-lap final. Burkhan's flying lap was .078 of a second slower for second with Hiemer third, .77 seconds off of Burkhart's time. Henry, fourth fastest in qualifying, lost his bid to improve with a fall in the dirt. The Germans led the Americans off the line with Kunzel first, Hiemer second, Burkhart third, and Henry fourth. Burkhart made an impressive pass on Hiemer on the second lap and moved to within three-tenths of a second of Kunzel by the end of the lap. Hiemer was eight- tenths of a second behind in third with Henry l.l seconds further back in fourth. Fillmore and Herfoss battled over fifth while Ward was alone in seventh- "The start was really good," said Hiemer- "lwas second behindJurgen. Then I make a mistake and Burkhan passed me." Two laps later Hiemer passed Burkhart to retake second place. "My hand slipped off the front brake and I thouSht I was going to take an off- track excu6ion," explained Burkhan. "l saved it, got back on. and was still in third." Hiemer was not letting Kunzelget away and had shaved the lead to two-tenths ofa second by the end ofthe fifth lap. Burkhart recovered to four-tenths of a second behind Hiemer while Henry watched his interval to Burkhart swell to 1.7 seconds- "l choose to run a little harder tire," said Henry about his lack of pace. ''Toward the end of the ra€e I felt like the tires would be good, but I think the softer tires are probably the way to go out there." Fillmore was a second or so behind Henry at the end of lap five, and he was still being hassled by Herfoss. Ward was now all alone, 2-4 seconds from his near- est rival ahead or behind him. ''l'm not real fuood] on this track, I mean speedwise," said Ward. "You really have to hang it out- Our setup and my style ,ust doesn't really work well here." Hiemer's intense pressure on Kunzel triggered the defining moment ofthe race when Kunzel crashed in the dirt on lap six. "l want to push a little bit harder on this lap," said Kunzel. ''l went a little too fast in the left-hand turn that's a liftle bumpy there. I don't know whar hap- pened, but I crashed then." Kunzel's crash shook up the normally unflappable Hiemer. "l was a little nervous and lost my rhythm," he said. Hiemer lost more than his rhythm thouSh, as Burkhart made a quick getaway from the unlucky KTI'I pair and had the lead with a second and a half t0 spare. "l thought to myself, 'don't grab too rnuch brake and go down behind him,"' said the new leadei "l watched Hiemer go around the outside of [Kunzel], and it took him a while. I iust slipped through underneath.'' Hiemer was momentarily slowed and t t (t t- 1,,, ,l ,3 I Luck's fickle fortunes were not with Burkhart or Henry but with \y'y'ard and Fillmore who linished second and third, .espectively- Damage limitation was the name of the garfie for Ward at Shawano. The Troy Lee Honda rider praised the circuit but said he had his worst races of 2005 on the mostly paved roller-coaster road course. The 2004 series champion's fifth- and second- place finishes moved him 28 poins clear of Doug Henry in the 2006 championship. "l can't complain, because this isn't my kind of t-ack," said Ward. "To come otrt of here with a 28-point lead instead of a ls-point lead is a gift. I still have to plug away because I lost 30 points in the last race at Reno last year, and I lost the cham- pionship. l'm iust going race by race, but l'm really excited because of the speed I showed here on this fast track really gave me some confidence. I'm happy.'' Kunzel's bleak season grew even dark- er at Shawano as he could only salvage a seventh place in race one and a fourth place in race two. Kunzel sits seventh in the championship, 42 points behind \4hrd. "l feel really bad, because at Road America I lost a lot of points," Kunzelsaid. "lt's really hard," ln Supermoto Lites, Hgnda-mounted Cassidy Anderson screamed to his third win of the year, and as in the previous two rounds, the Troy Lee Designs rider led