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AMA Superbike at Barber Motorsports Park: pair of top tens for Holden

In SBK

06 maggio 2009

Jake Holden improved on Saturday's eighth place finish to score a closing seventh in Sunday's rain-delayed and shortened American Superbike race in the Honda Superbike Classic at Barber Motorsports Park outside of Birmingham, Alabama.

Sunday's race was delayed by two hours by fierce thunderstorms and a tornado warning that forced the evacuation of the pit lane prior to the start of an earlier support race. Once the weather front passed, Sunday's three races were shortened and run back to back. The final race of the afternoon was the seventh round of the American Superbike championship, which was run on a mostly dry track, though with wet patches in a number of critical areas. The race was cut to 16 laps from 21.

Holden didn't improve on his eighth place starting position at the start of the race, but moved up one position on lap two. The Washington native was in that spot when the safety car was brought out to control the field while an ambulance crossed the track with an injured rider.

After the mandatory three laps behind the safety car, the field was given the green light and the pack thundered into turn one. Holden lost a spot on the re-start before reclaiming it on the 12th of 16 laps.

Then Holden began to close on Ducati rider Larry Pegram, but time wasn't on his side and he missed out on sixth by .303s.

Saturday's race had little drama, with the order of the top eight set from the seventh of 21 laps. Holden slotted into eighth off the start and wasn't able to gain any ground. He was bedeviled by side grip issues on the picturesque track where considerable time is spent at maximum lean angle.

Mat Mladin (Suzuki) won both races to run his season-starting consecutive win streak to seven. On Saturday he beat teammate Blake Young, while Aaron Yates (Suzuki) finished second on Sunday. Ben Bostrom (Yamaha) finished third both days.

The series has a one weekend break before traveling to the wine country north of San Francisco for the fifth championship round at Infineon Raceway where former World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson is hopeful of returning. Hodgson suffered a punctured lung, separated shoulder, and other injuries in a motocross accident in mid-March.

"I'm doing everything I can do to get ready for Infineon," Hodgson said. "And right now, Infineon looks very probable."

Jake Holden 8th, 7th
Just grip, side grip was my problem (Saturday). We softened it up and made second gear a little easier to ride out of some of the tight corners. Wasn't spinning up the tires much, so overall was conserving the tire better. Today I ended up a little better than yesterday, but I expected more out of myself for this weekend. Given the weather and the conditions, it was kind of tough to really excel and go where I wanted to. With the new parts and set-up from the Corona Extra Honda crew, it's totally different stuff than what I've used before. So I kind of had them move it back to what I'm used to, more towards the Superstock stuff like the Honda CBR1000RR I rode last year. And I picked up the pace a little bit more today. I didn't end up where I wanted to. At the end I was closing on (Larry) Pegram. I should've got a better start to the race. And I got held up by (Taylor) Knapp for a couple laps there and finally got by him. The race was so short today that I really didn't have enough time to get around Pegram and catch (Geoff) May. But with a better start I think I could've hung with May up with that group. I had a lot of confidence in the bike today.

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