SBK
AMA SBK: Podium for Miguel Duhamel at Mid-Ohio
06 agosto 2007  Duhamel was in fourth place when Saturday’s race was red-flagged on the 14th of 28 laps. Scoring reverted to the end of the 12th lap, the last one the entire field completed, and the race was shortened by two laps, as per new rules instituted at this race. Duhamel was quickly in the mix, soon fronting a thrilling battle for third among five riders, which included Aaron Yates, the Suzuki rider who narrowly denied Duhamel a podium at the previous race in Laguna Seca. Yates repeatedly probed Duhamel in turn one, but Duhamel wasn’t to be denied. And on a track where he’s won numerous Superbike, Supersport, and Formula Xtreme races, he added to his rostrum count with a fighting third. A spring change by his team in the interval between the two legs made the difference. “We made progress. We went faster,” Duhamel said. “Obviously, we need to go quite a bit faster tomorrow to at least be a little bit closer, and hopefully try to win one of these things, because that's really what we'd like to do.” The gap to Yates was .027 seconds, with third through seventh covered by less than a second. Just behind that pack was American Honda’s Jake Zemke. Zemke had front chatter problems in both legs, though the front end was slightly better in the second leg. The team was able to alleviate some of the front-end chatter on Sunday, only to run into clutch issues. Sunday’s race was delayed until about a 7:15 p.m. start while the track was dried from morning and afternoon showers. Mid-Ohio is one of several tracks where wet racing is prohibited for safety reasons. Both races were won by Suzuki’s Mat Mladin over teammate Ben Spies. Miguel Duhamel, 3rd, 6th “We just try to do the best that we can out there. Aaron (Yates) showed me a wheel. I thought maybe it was Eric (Bostrom), but coming out of (turn) one, Aaron showed me a wheel a little bit. Then I thought, "Okay, it's Aaron." So I just rode as hard as I could. I had a good pace. I did some low 25’s; for us, it's okay. I was able to hold him off. At the end of the last lap, I just made sure that I covered all my X's and my O's and brought the bike home. We had a great race at Laguna Seca. For sure I was thinking a little bit about that, going, "Well, this would be a fair trade." I'm happy I was able to bring it home. The guys did a lot of work. I tipped it over twice in the Keyhole. No big damage to the bike. A little bit too me, but not too bad. They did a lot of work, so my point is I'm happy I brought it on podium for them for this weekend.” “It was almost a comedy of errors for me (on Sunday) and I take full blame for our poor result today. The bike was good, the CBR1000RR was awesome. I just got a little bit spun out when I went out on the warm-up up lap. I felt a vibration in the brakes and forgot we had new brakes. When we have hot brake pads and discs that are cold and it vibrated a bit and it threw me off – to the point where I forgot to turn the traction control off for the start and that’s why my start was very average. I had to get that out of my head with the brakes and after that it was just a comedy of errors, Braking too hard, getting off the track. Then the lapped riders totally went against me.” Jake Zemke, 8th, 5th “We had chatter in both legs on Saturday. Actually, it was probably a little worse in the first leg than the second leg. We went to a different front tire for the second leg, but it was still there. It doesn’t even matter, any time you lean the thing over, it chatters, even when you pick the throttle back up. We’ve got data showing the thing just actually getting worse in some spots when you pick the throttle back up. There’s off cambers and rises and stuff you’ve got to go over. It’s impossible to get the bike turned when it’s doing that. Even on the re-start it was doing it, but I really put my head down and I got right back up to the back of those guys. There’s a couple areas of the track where I could make time, but then I’d just lose it all. We’ll get it fixed for tomorrow, hopefully.” “I actually was in third for probably about a third of the race and then Jamie (Hacking) got by me in the second third and then Aaron (Yates) got me in the last third (on Sunday). I had to pass a couple of guys, I had to pass Aaron and I had to pass Eric (Bostrom) both to get up to third. I started in fifth. Took me a few laps to get by them and when I did I felt good and I felt confident I could get away. But we had another issue with our clutch today and it was really strange. We went up to that little practice, warm-up thing they had, I could feel it. Basically, the slipper clutch wasn’t slipping. It was working like a standard clutch. So if I released the clutch going into the corner, the back end would chatter off the ground. I had to adjust a little bit for that and try to remember how to ride a Supersport bike. By having to ride that way I wasn’t getting into the corner the way I wanted to or thought I would. So I was definitely losing some time going into the corners. We got rid of a lot of the chatter problems we had yesterday, but we’re still fighting a little bit of chatter too.” Road Race Team Manager Ron Heben “Saturday we were happy with Miguel (Duhamel) getting a third and Jake (Zemke) had a good ride too. If we had some more practice time today (Sunday) we could have put together a better package, but that’s racing. It certainly looked like we were going to have a good finish. Jake had a good start. Miguel kind of struggled a little bit on the start. Jake got himself in third and seemed to be moving along pretty well. The pack fighting for third was quite intense. It was looking good in the early part of race with Jake and Miguel. Then Jake ran into clutch problems and couldn’t maintain his pace. We made some headway on some things that we improved as far as yesterday’s set-up, but we’re still not good enough. Now we’re going to test at Road Atlanta and work on things that we’ve got to improve on and prepare for VIR (Virginia International Raceway).” Saturday Superbike: 1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 2. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 3. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 4. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 5. Roger Lee Hayden (Kawasaki) 6. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 7. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 8. Jake Zemke (Honda) 9. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 10. James Ellison (Honda) Sunday Superbike: 1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 2. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 3. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 4. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 5. Jake Zemke (Honda) 6. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 7. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 8. Roger Lee Hayden (Kawasaki) 9. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 10. Matt Lynn (MV Agusta) Championship Standings: 1. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 486 2. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 459 3. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 360 4. Jake Zemke (Honda) 342 5. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 336 6. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 326 7. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 300 8. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 289 9. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 274 10. James Ellison (Honda) 256 |
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