evvai! e 2
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Pos. Rider Team Bike
1 Ben Bostrom American Honda Honda CBR1000RR
2 Mat Mladin American Suzuki Suzuki GSX-R1000
3 Miguel Duhamel American Honda Honda CBR1000RR
4 Aaron Yates American Suzuki Suzuki GSX-R1000
5 Eric Bostrom Ducati Austin Ducati 999
6 Josh Hayes Attack Kawasaki Kawasaki ZX-10R
7 Jake Zemke Erion Honda Honda CBR1000RR
8 Jacob Holden Lion Racing / Hypercycle Suzuki GSX-R1000
9 Larry Pegram Yamaha Yamaha YZF-R1
10 Geoff May Team Prieto Racing Suzuki GSX-R1000
Chris Martin
Without a doubt, Laguna Seca has been the scene of Ben Bostrom’s greatest racing moments. In ’99 he shocked the world at the Northern California circuit by winning a World Superbike race as a wild card -- his first Superbike win of any kind. Then in ’01, he visited America as a full-timer on the world scene and thoroughly dominated the Laguna Seca weekend, scoring the double win.
Superbike race results
Add the 2004 Laguna Seca event to that impressive list of achievements. After going nearly three years without a Superbike victory, Bostrom made a stunning return to form this weekend to claim pole position, a Formula Xtreme win, and most importantly, his second career AMA Chevrolet Superbike victory.
A favorite of fans around the globe, the 93,000 in attendance went wild when the local hero took the checkered flag after coming under intense pressure from Mat Mladin in the closing stages of the contest.
Early on, it was Mladin that looked like the strong favorite to claim the top spot on the podium. An early dogfight saw the Yoshimura Suzuki pilot jump from third to first on lap two, diving under both Bostrom and Erion Honda’s Jake Zemke as they disputed the lead in Turn 2.
Zemke then worked his way past Bostrom on lap 6 in Turn 11 to set after the escaping Mladin. Using his powerful black-and-silver CBR1000RR to good effect, the rookie pulled back the Aussie and eventually got close enough to perform a stunning sideways pass on the four-time champ entering the corkscrew on lap 11.
His lead didn’t last long, however; Mladin stuck his GSX-R1000 back through heading down the hill. Moments later, things got even worse for Zemke as he encountered a mechanical problem which caused him to drop his pace, lose his position to Bostrom, and signal frantically to the pits as he went down the front straight the next time by.
Mladin spent the next several laps building his advantage up while Zemke was fading backwards. On lap 16, the Suzuki runner was 1.192 seconds in front of Bostrom, who was finding clinging on a most challenging task.
But before lap 17 was completed, a red flag halted the race, sending a frustrated Mladin and the rest of the pack back into the pits.
After a short stoppage, Bostrom grabbed the restart holeshot, while the previous leader was shuffled back behind his teammate, Aaron Yates, and Bostrom’s teammate, Miguel DuHamel.
The CBR1000R-armed Bostrom threw down some blistering laps (including a 1:25.961) at the front to eek out a gap while Mladin battled furiously to keep up -- first with DuHamel, whom he traded third place with five times on lap 17, and then the charging Georgian, who can be an extremely tough man to pass when properly motivated.
By the time Mladin worked his way solidly into the runner-up spot (lap 22), Bostrom had more than two seconds on his side. That lead shrank as the 28-lap affair counted down until finally Mladin had closed to just a half-second behind on the final lap.
Bostrom responded brilliantly to the imposing Mladin’s presence, however, and put in an inch-perfect final lap to pick up his first Superbike win of any sort since July of ’01 (Brands Hatch, UK), and his first AMA Superbike win since August of ’99 (Brainerd International Raceway).
“This place has pretty good to me,” Bostrom said afterwards with a relieved and satisfied look on his face. “I really enjoyed the first part; we were in there battling it out, and then Mat kind of took control of the race, and I said, ‘Oh no, here it goes, Mat’s taking off. We just got lucky there was a red flag.
“Then we got a great restart. I jumped out there and tried to put some time in if I could, and I got a short gap. It’s really fun when you are out there racing, having to push hard every lap and you’re nervous. I think I was so tense the last few laps, I couldn’t remember what it was like to win a Superbike race. Everyone was hanging over the wall and cheering me on, and I knew I had to do it. I’m just glad to be back.”
Mladin explained the race from his perspective. “In the first one before the red flag, we got to half-distance and my bike was feeling really good. I got a little bit of a gap on everybody and the bike just felt really, really good. With the fuel down a little bit, it started working well, and then we got the red flag.
“On the second one, we had to take it easy on the clutch -- we’re still having clutch problems about six years after they first started. So we didn’t get the best start -- ended up in fourth. We fought hard to get around Miguel, and then we got up behind Aaron. And Aaron decided to hold me up for about three laps -- that’s good team spirit right there. By the time I passed him Ben had about two-and-a-half seconds with about six laps to go.
“I knew it was going to be hard work because Ben has been solid all week, but we put our head down and Ben made one fairly big mistake in Turn 5, and that let us get to the point where we got a sniff. Coming over the start/finish line with one to go, I thought if I could get this lap right and Ben doesn’t, I might be able to get him in 10 or 11. But he got it right, and I got it right, and unfortunately the gap stayed pretty much the same. Congratulations to Ben. It was a great race, and he’s been solid all week.”
Current championship runner-up DuHamel found fighting his way past Yates even more of a struggle than Mladin did, as the two swapped paint on numerous occasions. The Canadian finally picked up the final spot on the box with a lap 27 sequence that saw him take control of third.
“It was a really exciting race,” DuHamel remarked. “Aaron was doing everything he could to stay in front. Some of these guys that have been struggling, you’re kind of happy to see them up there. But I realized he was taking points away from me so I had to get in front of him. He sure found some speed there at the end.
“It was a good battle. Hats off to him for putting it together. I was really hoping to get in front of him a little earlier and make a run at Mat and Ben. But, I’m very happy. Laguna has always been tough on me; I always do decent here, and third is very decent again.”
Yates grabbed fourth, three tenths behind DuHamel.
Ducati Austin’s Eric Bostrom picked up fifth after scrapping with Attack Kawasaki’s Josh Hayes in both legs of the race. Desperate to run up front, the Ducati Corse-backed ace made a couple of mistakes on the day -- including running off the course briefly -- but he settled down to open up a near-five second advantage over the Mississippian by the time they reached the checkered flag.
Early leader Zemke took a disappointing seventh -- his team clearly unable to get his RR worked perfectly again after the red flag that at first seemed like a major stroke of good luck for the 28-year-old.
Lion Racing’s Jacob Holden came home in eighth, with Triangle Cycles’ Larry Pegram, and Prieto Racing’s Geoff May rounding out the top 10.
While some aspects of the race were clearly a bit trying on Mladin, he did stop the championship bleeding that had been taking place in recent events. With Ben Bostrom well out of the title hunt, Mat stretched out some ground on the former World Superbike star’s teammates with his runner-up finish.
With three events and six races yet to be run, Mladin now holds a still-slim 10-point advantage over DuHamel (391 vs. 381), while Zemke’s downer of an outing saw him slip to 19 points back (372).
formula extreme 600
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[Modificato da BEN BOSTROM 155! 12/07/2004 9.58]