Results AMA Superbike Championship, Elkhart Lake, Road America2008-06-09 22:00American Honda's Neil Hodgson maintained third place at the halfway point in the in the AMA Superbike Championship with a pair of fourth place finishes in difficult weather conditions at Road America in the American heartland of Wisconsin. Teammate Miguel Duhamel did nearly as well, making a late pass to finish fifth on Saturday and finishing sixth on Sunday. Severe weather plagued the area on the weekend, with a tornado sighting south of the track. Thunderstorms came and went and Saturday's races were delayed by rain and lightning. Sunday's practice was run in a steady rain. The overall affect was a lack of dry set-up time and a green track after the downpours. Duhamel was especially affected after a fuel pump failed, denying him almost any dry practice. Hodgson was away behind the leaders in both races, which were held under warm, overcast skies on a track with several sixth gear straightaways. On Saturday, he lost touch with the leaders early and raced by himself to fourth. Sunday he turned off his traction control in a bid to have more control on corner exit. The 2003 World Superbike Champion was closer in the early stages, but any chance at repeating his podium performance from the previous week at Miller Motorsports Park ended when he lost the draft of the lead trio. Again he found himself alone en route to another fourth. "I sit here now and think, 'I should have pushed harder on them first laps to get the proper tow,' but then I could have been sat in the gravel hating life," he said while keeping third in the point standings. "Tough weekend really. I'm not happy with two fourths at all. But I've got to step up my riding, I think, and try to improve my settings." Duhamel was part of a four-rider battle for fifth place on Saturday. The veteran used the speed advantage of his Honda CBR1000RR to re-pass Aaron Yates (Suzuki) on the final lap to take fifth. Sunday he passed Yates' teammate Geoff May on the final lap to take sixth. Saturday's race was won by Ben Spies (Suzuki) from teammate Mat Mladin. Mladin reversed the order on Sunday. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) was third on both days. Neil Hodgson, 4th, 4th When you come to a track like this, and you get your one 40 minute practice session all weekend, because obviously we don't get a lot of practice anyway, and the weather's been iffy, it's difficult. New bike, all new traction control system, all new everything, it's hard. That's a lot of it. We made some real small changes on Sunday. I rode without any TC (traction control), because I just felt I was being held up too much. It's such a fine line between getting it right and not. It probably was a little bit better, which shows how bad it was for the first race, because I was just killing power out of the corners. Certain corners it didn't do too bad. Anywhere it spun, obviously, it killed power and that was that. It was a bit like yesterday. It's so frustrating. I had him (Jamie Hacking) in sight. Jamie managed to get the tow of the leaders and I just sort of missed it. Obviously, it's tricky conditions, the track's pretty green and both of our rear tires were sliding. Miguel Duhamel 5th, 6th We had brake issues on Saturday. They kind of glazed over and I couldn't stop the bike. Even though it looked good on TV, every time I hit the brakes I wasn't sure if I was going to make the corner. But at least the bike was good enough that I could fight and get that good fifth and I really felt like we should have been a little higher. We had a fuel pump go bad on us in practice, so we had no dry track time at all. I got to hand it to Jon (Cornwell, of Ohlins) and (crew chief) Al (Ludington). I hand it to them too when it doesn't go well, but I got to hand it to them for Sunday's race. They gave me a real good set-up. I was hoping Sunday would be dry, but it was wet in morning warm-up, and in the wet we went pretty good. I was just putting sections together and when I put the sections together I was pretty fast. And then we went to dry for the race and we tried some different brakes and we went with a little bit of a different tire and I couldn't get comfortable. The brakes were working pretty good where I was backing the bike in. It's frustrating, a little tough to see those guys pull away, but it was good on the other hand because we've got a good bike. I didn't destroy the bike. Hopefully, luck will go our way and we'll be able to put this thing on the podium, for sure." American Honda Road Race Manager Ron Heben A pair of fourths for the weekend isn't what we wanted. Obviously, Saturday we were kind of encouraged and tried to move forward and get back on the box. Today presented all of the teams with a bunch of challenges with the weather conditions and we came up a little bit short. And it was a frustrating weekend again for the American Honda team. We go next week to Mid-Ohio for a test and we'll look at some of the things that held us back and hopefully we'll return to race at Laguna in front of the world and we can put the new CBR1000 up front. Sunday Superbike: 1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 2. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 3. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 4. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 5. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 6. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 7. Geoff May (Suzuki) 8. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 9. Alastair Seeley (Suzuki) 10. Chris Peris (Suzuki) Saturday Superbike: 1. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 2. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 3. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 4. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 5. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 6. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 7. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 8. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 9. Geoff May (Suzuki) 10. Alastair Seeley (Suzuki) Championship Standings: 1. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 378 2. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 338 3. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 293 4. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 292 5. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 265 6. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 254 7. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 238 8. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 234 9. Geoff May (Suzuki) 199 10. Scott Jensen (Suzuki) 188 Source: Honda Pro Image Click here to visit our forums to discuss this story |
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