AMA Superbike Races, Birmingham, AL.

May 14th -16th, 2004

   
By Bobby Smith

John Crittenden joined me for this trip so the two of us headed out of Knoxville Friday morning.  We decided to take the Interstate to just past Chattanooga where we hopped off onto highway 11.  We cruised through some small towns and eventually made our way to the motel in Trussville.

 We arrived before the room was ready so we took advantage of the hotels close proximity to the brand new Thunder Creek Harley-Davidson dealership.  This place was incredible!  Over 33000 square feet of Harley “stuff”.

 After perusing through the goodies at Thunder Creek we headed back to the motel where we found the room was ready.  We dumped our stuff in the room and set out for the track.  The Barber Motorsports Museum was first on our list so we paid our $10 (a bargain!) and headed in.  It’s really tough to describe this place.  George Barber has acquired over 800 motorcycles, a Lotus race car collection, some classic and modern American automotive iron and some other vehicles that defy definition.  He even had one of Dan Gurney’s new Alligators.  All I can say is that we spent about 6 hours in this place and we rushed the last hour or two!

 Saturday we grabbed a quick breakfast and headed back to the track.  The first stop was a quick trip through the paddock where we checked out the rigs and bikes of the racers.  You really get to see the contrast between the factory boys and the privateers.  It’s fairly obvious that the privateers are there because they simply love racing.  We also got to see Michael Jordan’s venture into racing.  He’s sponsoring a rider, Montez Stewart, in both the Supersport and Superstock classes.  We watched some qualifying and then sat down to enjoy the Formula Extreme race.  This was a great race with Jake Zemke winning over the “Old Man” Miguel Duhamel.

Next up was the first Superbike race of the weekend.  Mat Mladin has been dominating this year, as usual, but the Superbike rookie, Jake Zemke, has been giving him fits the last couple of races.  These two diced it up throughout the race with Mladin taking the win by about a half a bike length.

Three races were scheduled for Sunday.  We got to the track early to make another pass through the paddock.  We watched the mechanics wrench on some of the bikes, prepping them for the practice runs.  By far the most interesting was the team working on Eric Bostrom’s Ducati.  It took a few minutes but it finally dawned on us that these guys were speaking Italian and listening to Italian music.  Obviously factory trained techs.  We noticed that one of them was smoking a cigar and enjoying a Bud… at 8:00 AM .  Well, I guess it was about 4:00 in the afternoon in Bologna . 

The Superstock race was exciting with Jamie Hacking taking the win.  The real show was the battle between the two Hayden brothers, Roger and Tommy, for second place.  Tommy’s the older brother and he snatched second place from little brother Roger.  You could tell that there is definitely a sibling rivalry between these two.

Supersport racing was next.  Remember Roger and Tommy?  Well, these two were at it again and Tommy had the lead going into the last lap.  Apparently Roger had seen enough of big brother’s rear end so he passed Tommy in the final section and won his first ever AMA National race.

The final race of the weekend was the second Superbike race.  This was another great race.  Zemke appeared more determined than ever to win.  He pulled away to a good lead for most of the race.  Mladin made several attempts to take the lead but the Miguel Duhamel pulled another trick out of his hat and pushed Mladin back to third.  We thought that Jake would take the race but Duhamel launched an incredible effort and took the lead on the last lap for the win.  This is at least the second time this year that Duhamel has taken the win from the rookie.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend.  Great racing, amazing museum, beautiful track and the weather really cooperated.  Make plans to join us next year.