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Second
Race Report AMA Chevy Trucks
Superbike Round 2
Date April 7, 2002
Circuit Fontana International
Speedway, California
HMC Ducati rider Doug Chandler was robbed of a podium
finish when a crash forced a red flag on lap 25 of the
28 lap race at Fontana Speedway. Chandler came back
from an early race set-back to close a 5 second gap to
a 0.6 second gap in three laps, finishing in fourth position.
The Californian was ready to round up Mat Mladin and Eric
Bostrom when the red flag appeared, but with 80% of the
race complete, the AMA was justified to refuse a restart.
Mat Mladin was watching his prey descending through his
team pit board and the reigning Champion was quoted several
times saying: "Doug would have probably smoked both
of us. Definitely me anyway."
"I feel pretty confident I would have got both of
them," said Chandler. "I didn't expect to catch
them so quickly and with three laps left I decided to
hold back and wait for the last lap. Eric and Mat began
to battle between themselves so I thought I'd wait until
they had nothing left and make my move. Unfortunately
we were short changed.
I had a big moment in the first lap and it took me a while
to recover, but the bike was handling so good that it
was easy to keep consistent fast laps and fortunately
the traffic was light making the going easier. Chandler
was lapping in the low 26s right to the last lap, less
than a second off Friday's fastest qualifying time. |
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