American Honda teammates have mixed fortunes

2008-08-18 09:04
American Honda teammates had mixed fortunes at Virginia International Raceway, with Miguel Duhamel carding a sixth and a fifth, while teammate Neil Hodgson recovered from a vicious Saturday high-side to finish seventh on Sunday.

The nature of the 18-turn, 2.25-mile road course doesn't suit the strengths of the Honda CBR1000RR. Rather than flowing, sweeping corners where the Honda excels, the track has a number of hard braking corners and rapid transitions. From the beginning of the weekend, the teams struggled to find a workable set-up.

Duhamel had one of his most consistent weekends of the year. He would have been fifth both days, if not for being passed by Yamaha rider Jason DiSalvo on the final lap of Saturday's race in turn one. There was some irony in the pass, since Duhamel was strong on the brakes in the slippery corner than bends right.

Hodgson was in front of the Duhamel/DiSalvo battle until he high-sided in the first turn on the ninth lap while running sixth. Though the crash was spectacular, Hodgson didn't suffer serious injuries.

The Honda teammates ran together for much of Sunday's race. Hodgson was making a run at Duhamel for fifth when he ran off the track in the first turn on the 27th of 28 laps. That dropped him from sixth to seventh, with Duhamel finishing fifth.

Both races were won by Mat Mladin (Suzuki) from teammates Ben Spies and Tommy Hayden.

Miguel Duhamel 6th, 5th

Well, you know the set-up today was quite a bit better and had a really good race today. We ran out of a little bit of rubber on the right side there at the end, because I think my bike was really good there. I was trying to catch Eric (Bostrom) and on the right side we just ran out of rubber. I just used it up a little too much. But it was a great race and happy there was no red flag and the team did a great job and looking forward to Road Atlanta. Yesterday, I had a little bit of bad strategy on my part going into turn one. I was kind of in the middle of the racetrack, trying to block the angles and (Jason) DiSalvo got inside me on the brakes. And then I just tried to stay close to him. And he really put a good lap in at the end. And I was hoping for him to do a little mistake so I'd have a shot. But his last lap was a 26.7 and my fastest before that was 27.3, and I matched him my last lap. So it was alright. I think I could have probably still stole fifth, which would have been better.

Neil Hodgson DNF, 7th

Nothing really worked to be honest. I were way off the pace and then I ran off the track, just at the end, just the second to last lap in turn one. I was just trying to outbrake Miguel. When I got in there, I couldn't risk tipping it in so I had to go straight, like everybody else did. We did the same lap times as yesterday, so not very good really. But better than yesterday. Yesterday it were a weird, weird crash, because obviously I've got traction control and everything. I'm not the sort of guy who trusts traction control all the time, so I'm never going to just twist the throttle open. I was just squeezing it on, 30% throttle, then touched it a little bit further and just went and said, oh no. It's a shame, because I landed pretty hard; it winded me, which is always the worst. Instantly knocked the wind out so I couldn't breathe. Sort of banged every other corner of my body. My shoulder' was killing me. At first I wasn't too sure what was the worst. I banged both of my hips, which is random, then I realized I'd done something in there.

American Honda Road Race Manager Ron Heben

We came here to VIR and for some reason the Honda team can't have very good luck, it seems like. We struggled yesterday, we struggled all weekend, honestly. Miguel (Duhamel) put in some consistent rides and certainly showed that he's the man for showing the guys how to into turn one on the brakes. No one seemed to be able to keep up with him on that. other parts of the track we weren't able to keep up with the competition. And where we're finishing we're not satisfied. We have a week off to go back and look at what we need to do. Try to learn from this weekend and learn from the tests that we had at Atlanta and go out there and see if we can't put this CBR1000 back up on the box.

Sunday Superbike:
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Ben Spies (Suzuki)
3. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki)
4. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha)
5. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
6. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki)
7. Neil Hodgson (Honda)
8. Geoff May (Suzuki)
9. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha)
10. Matt Lynn (Honda)

Saturday Superbike:
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Ben Spies (Suzuki)
3. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki)
4. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha)
5. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha)
6. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
7. Geoff May (Suzuki)
8. Roger Hayden (Kawasaki)
9. Chris Peris (Suzuki)
10. Kenny Noyes (Suzuki)

Championship Standings:
1. Ben Spies (Suzuki) 541
2. Mat Mladin (Suzuki) 523
3. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 402
4. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 387
5. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 386
6. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 365
7. Miguel Duhamel (Honda) 335
8. Geoff May (Suzuki) 311
9. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 288
10. Chris Peris (Suzuki) 279

Source: Honda Pro Image

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