Larry Lawrence | April 5, 2017
Eric Bostrom’s 2001 Pro Honda Oils 600 Superpsort Championship was especially satisfying after losing the series by a hair in 2000. (Henny Abrams photo)
Sunday, October 1, 2000 is a day that Eric Bostrom will never forget. That was the date of the final round of the Pro Honda Oils 600 SuperSport Championship at Willow Springs Raceway. It became a day that will go down in in the record books with the series ending in the most dramatic fashion not only in 600 Superpsort, but one of the most dramatic of all AMA Pro Road Racing history.
The championship came down the final lap. Points leader Eric Bostrom led a three-rider pack that included Honda’s Kurtis Roberts and Yamaha’s Jamie Hacking. Coming into turn eight of the nine-turn Willow Springs Raceway, Hacking swept under Bostrom, the two made contact and Bostrom was forced wide. Roberts snuck underneath both and took the lead. Even though Roberts’ path to the victory was cleared, he still needed help from Hacking to hold off Bostrom to the finish line. Bostrom drove hard out of turn nine, but came up inches short of passing Hacking.
Roberts and Bostrom ended the championship tied in points with 276 each, but Roberts won the title by virtue of winning the most races!
It doesn’t get any more intense than that.
While ending the 2000 season with an empty feeling after losing championship by just inches had to be a gut-wrenching experience for Bostrom, it was also all the inspiration he and the Kawasaki squad needed. The fuel of the anger and disappointment of the 2000 series, served to fire Bostrom and his squad on the next season. Bostrom returned more determined than ever to take the coveted 600 SuperSport crown.
The 2001 Pro Honda Oils 600 SuperSport Series set up to be an intense battle among one of the most talent-laden fields ever witnessed in the championship. All four Japanese makers entered factory, or factory-backed teams. Bostrom and Kawasaki would be up against a mammoth task of beating Honda’s Supersport King Miguel Duhamel, defending series champ Kurtis Roberts, along with Honda’s young up-and-coming riders Jake Zemke, Roger Lee Hayden and Josh Hayes. Yamaha had the talented Australian brothers Anthony and Aaron Gobert, along with Tommy Hayden at the absolute peak of his career. Suzuki had the potent squad of Aaron Yates and Jamie Hacking, as well as young gun John Hopkins. And Bostrom was on his own with no fellow Kawasaki riders to assist.
The racing season was also challenged by the 9-11 attacks on America that forced a cancelation of the penultimate round. Yet the racing and the country went on, determined not to let life be altered by an act of terror.
The season didn’t get off to the greatest start for Bostrom and Kawasaki. In qualifying for the prestigious Daytona 600 Supersport race Bostrom only managed a fifth aboard his factory Kawasaki ZX-6R. The Honda CBR600F4s of Roberts, Nicky Hayden and Miguel Duhamel were blazingly fast around Daytona International Speedway. Then there was John Hopkins showing surprising speed on the Valvoline/EMGO Suzuki GSX-R600.
In the race Bostrom finished fifth, but it could have been much worse. Oil in turn one nearly took him down. Nicky Hayden and Grant Lopez weren’t as fortunate and both crashed in the oil. The re-start saw an epic battle with the lead pack with as many as nine riders doing drafting wars on the banking. Bostrom went from first to fifth late in the race, caught out by the draft coming into the first turn. At the checkered flag Bostrom was only 0.363-seconds behind winner Duhamel, but still finished fifth. It was that close.
In round two at Sears Point Bostrom finished second to Anthony Gobert. That finish moved Bostrom up to third in the standings behind Duhamel and Gobert.
Bostrom broke through at Road Atlanta and took a dominating victory over the Yoshimura Suzukis of Aaron Yates and Jamie Hacking.
Bostrom took the series lead after his victory at Road Atlanta. He led the championship the rest of the year, holding off strong challenges by Gobert and Duhamel, the all-time wins leader in the series. Gobert and Duhamel finished second and third, respectively.
Perhaps the biggest victory of the season for Bostrom came at Pikes Peak International Raceway in August, as the series was coming to a tension-filled end. Duhamel and Anthony Gobert needed the win to stay in the championship hunt, but it was Bostrom beating out Gobert by 1.134 seconds for the win. Duhamel’s chances were seriously hurt by finishing a sub-par sixth.
The 9-11 attacks canceled the Willow Springs round, since travel would have been nearly impossible just days after the attack. There was even discussion of canceling the final round at the end of September at Virginia Intl. Raceway, but in the end, it was decided to get things back to normal as much as possible.
The Willow cancelation actually helped protect Bostrom’s lead. Gobert and Duhamel still had a mathematical chance coming into the finale at VIR, but even with Gobert winning the race and Duhamel taking third, Bostrom’s conservative seventh was all he needed. He won the championship over Gobert by 20 points.
The Pro Honda Oils 600 SuperSport title marked the third road-racing title and fourth AMA National Championship for Bostrom. He won the Formula Xtreme Series in 1998 and the Harley-Davidson 883 Sportster based SuperTwins class in 1997. A versatile racer, Bostrom was also a flat-track racing champion, winning the Harley-Davidson 883 Dirt Track title in 1996 — making him one of the few riders to win national titles in both road racing and flat track.
Bostrom’ s title gave Kawasaki its second AMA 600 Pro Honda Oils SuperSport title. Team Green’s previous victory in the class came in 1993 with Miguel Duhamel.
You could tell Bostrom was still thinking about the one that got away the year before, but now he’d settled the score.
“We almost won a championship last year but there were a few races where we should have went and got points,” said Bostrom, after his scoring the title in Virginia. “Maybe I played it too safe or something. This year we just said hey, ‘I don’t care if I fall off or whatever, I’m going to go out and win as many races as I can.’ This is about one of the tougher ones to win, for sure. There’s always lots of competition in this class, and anything can happen; it’s always a different winner.”