The 2008 AMA Supersport Champion dropped his lap time from a Friday 1:40.595 to Saturday’s 1:38.893 on the 2.9-mile short course at Daytona International Speedway.
Bostrom improved his position from fourth to second, but still trails American Honda’s Neil Hodgson by 1.3 secs. The final chance to grab bragging rights will come on Sunday, the final day of the three-day Dunlop Daytona tire test.
“The biggest thing is the front end,” Bostrom said during the one hour break between his Superbike and Daytona SportBike duties. “Yesterday we were really uncomfortable with too much trail. We were riding around and I was pushing and started pushing a little bit harder, a little bit harder. I’m like, ‘Man, it’s my only bike. We got to do something different.’”
Said crew chief Jefferson Burks, “I was surprised at how big a change it was. He was liking the feedback it was giving him, then, boom, one and a half seconds. We picked up 1.5 secs. from yesterday and that was the biggest thing.”
Burks said the triple clamps were built in California and shipped to Daytona, arriving on Thursday. Triple clamps are among the parts that have to be submitted for homologation to AMA Pro Racing. If Yamaha wants to use the triple clamps, they’ll have to make them available to all riders, likely as a kit part.
“I told the guys I was trying to make a second a day. They had one more thing to take trail away from the bike. The instant I rode out, you could feel the thing trying to make the corner, where before your hands were (too far) out. That’s all it was. Just taking the trail away and all of a sudden your time came easy. Now it’s easy to ride around at that speed. We’ve got a long ways to go, obviously.”
Bostrom said the rear also felt better, though he was at a loss to explain it. And the fuel mapping transformed the engine.
“Before it was really abrupt,” he said. “You’d just touch it and maybe you’d want like 20 or 30 or 40 horsepower, but it would just go bang, like 70 horse it would come on. And it would give you that sensation like this thing is a machine or a monster, then it would really flatten out. So it was really hard to ride, because when you shut it off you were like, when do I get on the gas? You’d really wait till you pointed it. You’d give up a few tenths waiting, and then by the time you got on the gas, you’d stand on it. They smoothed that out. We were trying to make it more like an electrical motor, because that’s what that motor really is. It’s pretty impressive.”
Bostrom credited Vito Bolognesi, the team’s engine management and data acquisition specialist.
“Vito (Bolognesi) did a really good job on our fuel mapping. That improved our time quite a bit,” he said.
Bostrom was also to spend more time on the track, 35 laps in total, compared to just 21 on Friday.
Saturday Afternoon Session:
1. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 1:38.536
2. Ben Bostrom (Yamaha) 1:39.893
3. Larry Pegram (Ducati) 1:40.060
4. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 1:40.766
5. Chris Ulrich (Suzuki) 1:41.166
6. Jeremy McWilliams (Buell) 1:44.052
7. Doug Toland (Honda) 1:46.310
