Fontana Day 2 (Spoilers)

Well, it was just beautiful weather, and turn out was much better than
yesterday. Yesterday we had maybe half as many people. But to be fair,
that's understandable as the racing didn't actually start until almost 4
o'clock with SB at 3:50 and FX at 5pm. Pretty late in the day.

Racing started earlier today with SStock at 11:30. Not a bad race, but
idiomatic of the weekend, there was little going on at the front with most
of the interesting action working in the back. Mind, the race was Red
flagged in the middle, and that mixed the race up a little but, Jason
DiSalvo decisively took the win fairly early on, followed by Hacking and
Yates spread across the track. It wasn't a tight nit pack that we're used to
seeing in SStock. Geoff May made a solid showing in fourth followed by EBoz
in 5th. Striking difference from FX yesterday, and just a few days ago he
was thinking he would have SStock more dialed in than FX.

Speaking of FX I heard a blurb somewhere about DiSalvo being upset at Hayes
for not letting him by to fight for the lead. I mean, seriously, why would
he even think that Hayes would just let him go? Josh was right on the money
since EBoz isn't there on points yet and the game is between Josh and Jason
at the moment.

Supersport race. What an utter disaster for a race. First, the factories
have fled SSport it seems. Hacking, Hayden, and Spies. That's it this season
with the rest being support and privateer teams. Next, Roger wasn't there
because of his injury, which is probably a good things considering how the
race went down today. Then, Spies loses it in the first couple turns of the
Red Flag Restart. The race didn't make it through the first lap without a
Red Flag, and Ben tossed it in the restart.

That left Hacking and the privateers. Oh boy.

Props to Michael Barnes and Chris Eslick for their podium finishes, but this
race was a parade with looong patches between floats. Hacking ran away with
it with no issues (once he survived the first turn of course). The first
interesting actual on track race battle was the fight for 8th place among
Tigert and Meiring.

Finally we got the Superbike race. This was a different race than yesterday,
even though the results were the same. Mat and Ben fought really hard for
the first half but young Ben got the better of Mat and laid waste. If Mat
wanted to know what it was like for the others racing behind him the past
year, now he knows.

Ben was dominant both days, but there weren't any glaring bike issues with
Mats bike today. Ben was just simply stinky fast.

Again, the battle for 4-5-6 was the race of the day. Hard fought with lots
of position changes among Miguel, Neil, BenD and Tommy. Yates had a much
harder time with race 2, he was complaining about being in pain during the
SStock race, so this could have been a remnant of that.

I don't know what Jake was doing to be all by his lonesome both days. There
were definately 3 groups at speed, Ben and Mat, Jake all alone, and then the
rest of the factory riders. But, much like last year, the Suzukis are
setting the pace with the others hardly capable of keeping up.

An interesting note, tho, from the Program. Anthony Gobert somehow still
holds the Race Lap record, set back in '02. They printed it in MPH (which is
really stupid, but that's ok, there were a lot of issues with the program),
so I don't know if Ben managed to blast it to smithereens today or not. Hard
to imagine that he hasn't, but who knows.

Regards,

Will Hartung

 

Yea, everytime you want to try and like the guy, he chokes on that silver
spoon in his mouth and makes an ass of himself.

Yea, true. Ben never seemed as hungry for SSport anyway. I imagine that
Roger will be back at the next race. He should be more comfortable then and
will be able to stay in the top five for points. I can very easily see Jamie
having a DNF in the season that will push Roger back in to contention.
Season is no where near early.

Yea, you need to go to the track itself to get the schedules. It wasn't bad
this year. SSport had the 2 red flags, plus a gaggle of folks being eaten in
turn 5-6, but the events were far enough apart that the start times weren't
impacted.

Oh yes...it looks like we'll definately be having a fight this year.

Yea, I was thinking that too, but if that was the case, I'd think the other
races records might still be up as well. And I know the track has changed a
little bit, but not that dramatically.

It's allright, the program had all sorts of issues. A careful analysis of
the program had Eric Bostrom living in 5 different cities, including,
apparently, next door to the Haydens and in North Corlina (???). They also
had a local rider from "Riverbank, CA" (famous for the Riverbank Raceway in
the early 70's). That wouldn't be so utterly horrible if RiverSIDE wasn't 15
miles away from the track!!

I'd like too, I've never been there. But I don't think we'll make it this
year either. It's so soon after Fontana, messes with the schedule and
budget. I'd really like to go to Miller, tho, just to see the new track.

Regards,

Will Hartung