Crashing is never a good thing. Or is it? When Eric Bostrom slipped off the Team Cycle WorldAttack Performance Yoshimura Suzuki GSX-R1000 on the second lap of Sunday’s AMA national at Virginia International Raceway, he had just passed the Foremost Insurance Ducati 1098R of Larry Pegram, a three-time AMA Pro American SuperBike race-winner last season.
“Larry is a late braker,” explained Bostrom. “I got into Turn 1 hot. I was asking a lot from the front tire, but I was confident that I’d gotten the bike slowed down enough to tip it into the corner. I was wrong.”
On Saturday, Bostrom had qualified fourth-quickest and finished seventh (the team’s best result to date). For Sunday’s race, he was seeking greater success. During the 20-minute morning warm-up, run under overcast skies, he was once again fourth-quickest, posting a best lap of 1:25.887. Graves Yamaha rider Josh Hayes led the way with a 1:25.027. Of the 17 riders on track, only five—Hayes, Pat Clark Motorsports’ Ben Bostrom, Rockstar Makita Suzuki rider Tommy Hayden, Eric and Erik Buell Racing’s Geoff May—were able to circulate within that same second.
Explained Bostrom, “I got into Turn 1 hot. I was asking a lot from the front tire, but I was confident that I’d gotten the bike slowed down enough to tip it into the corner. I was wrong.”
Light rain temporarily stopped the previously scheduled Daytona SportBike race and delayed the start of the Superbike event. Knowing that thunderstorms were forecasted all weekend, crew chief Richard Stanboli and mechanics Todd Fenton, Jim “JJ” Matter and Dan Schwartz had prepped the team’s “B” bike for a wet race. I asked Stanboli about the modifications. “You’d fill an entire notebook with all the changes,” he laughed. “Basically, the bike is set up like you would ride it in the canyons—lower and softer.”
The “A” bike had undergone changes, as well. On Saturday night, Stanboli and Matter conducted an impromptu test to determine just how much the combination of ambient and normal fluid operating temperature was affecting damping. The left fork leg (compression side) was clamped in a suspension dyno and cycled repeatedly until the temperature of the leg, measured by a strap-on heat probe, indicated 40 degrees Celsius. Based on what they discovered, our Öhlins tech, Matt Hickson, swapped the valving in the NIX cartridge from C10 to C11 to better control compression damping as the race wound down. Rebound remained the same—R3.
Other fork changes included shorter top-out springs (same 3.5 Nm rate but with fewer coils), which, according to Hickson, would get rid of the “dribbles” (chatter) in the back section of the track and reduce initial dive during hard braking. For the morning warm-up, the TTX36 shock was fitted with a softer 105-Nm spring with 12mm of preload. That was too soft, causing the bike to squat too much under acceleration. So for the race, Hickson refitted the stiffer 120-Nm spring.
Back to the actual race: “I got a really good jump,” said Bostrom. “But the gearing was really long, and I ended up bogging [the engine] a bit. Still, I ended up pretty evenly matched but not in the lead. I filed into Turn 1 in fourth behind Josh, Ben and Tommy. It was an absolutely ideal position to be in to chase those guys and go to school on them.
“Then [Jordan Suzuki's] Brett McCormick came barreling into Turn 1 on the inside. I don’t know why he didn’t crash, but he should have; he was going straight for Josh and Tommy. Somehow, miraculously, on cold, unused tires, he got the thing stopped, but not without standing up everyone. He almost ran Tommy, Ben and me off the track. Ultimately, Josh was the luckiest. Brett should have crashed and taken Josh with him. That’s what all of us expected.”While all of that was happening, Pegram also managed to sneak past. Bostrom saw the situation developing into a repeat of Saturday—going from fourth at the start to sixth or seventh at the end of the first lap. “I was following Larry, and his bike was puffing blue smoke like crazy. It was actually scaring me. On top of that, Tommy and Ben were disappearing. I decided, ‘I have to pass Larry now.’”
Down but not out: Team Cycle World Attack Performance Yoshimura Suzuki rider Eric Bostrom continues to make progress in his return to racing. “Even though I’m not one with the motorcycle yet,” he said, “I’m starting to be able to assert myself in that direction.”
Fast-forward to Turn 1 and the start of the second lap: “I was still trail-braking hard. I was tipping the bike into the corner, but I was releasing the brake. I thought I was solid. In retrospect, I should have waited a few more feet. Larry was on the outside of me, and I ran him off the track. It was my fault.”
Bostrom was still fairly upright when he lost traction. “Basically, I crashed when I was almost straight up and down,” he said. “So, I hit the ground pretty hard.”
Fortunately, Bostrom was unhurt. The bike, however, took a beating. “It did two complete flips in the air, landed and then did two more flips,” said Bostrom. “It was ugly.” The custom aluminum gas tank had taken on a new shape, the forged magnesium OZ Racing rear wheel got dinged and all of the bodywork was destroyed. For the most part, though, the bike was together again that same evening.
Despite the crash, Bostrom is pleased with the progress that the team has made. “I think the whole weekend was really positive,” he said. “I was pretty enthused with the setup of the bike, and I really wanted to go for a podium position. I felt it was within our reach—just barely.
“For the first time, I really felt like my old self—getting that ‘racer’ feeling again. I’m starting to begin to make things happen on the motorcycle. I can’t really explain it. It’s magical. Maybe it took a slippery track like VIR to bring it out, but it just turned me into an animal. That was really positive.
“You have to push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of doing. That’s why, when these guys get on a roll, they’re so hard to beat. They’ve found the edge of the envelope—and it’s within their control. They’re in a good place, where they feel like they can’t do anything wrong. I think at VIR we began to break the bike the same way you would break a horse. It’s starting to become my bike.”
