Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Timing and scoring problems have radically changed the grids for at least two races already and may result in Mat Mladin’s pole-winning time from Friday at Pikes Peak being disallowed.

Late Saturday afternoon, AMA Pro Racing issued revised Supersport times from those shown on timing & scoring monitors during and immediately after qualifying, and may issue revised Superstock qualifying times as well.

The Supersport results were issued about 3 hours after qualifying actually ended.

AMA Pro Racing also issued a new Formula Xtreme grid a day after FX qualifying–producing the new grid less than an hour before the scheduled start of the race.

The AMA Pro Racing staff did not notify the SPEED TV production crew; SPEED’s Greg White found out that the Formula Xtreme grid was revised in a conversation with a Roadracingworld.com staffer. White rushed a revised grid to the TV truck and said that if he hadn’t found out about the grid change, the TV show would have shown the original grid.

The new Supersport Qualifying results move Alex Gobert from 2nd-fastest to 10th-fastest, for example, and 8 of the top 11 times have been revised. The new Formula Xtreme grid moves Steve Rapp from 4th-fastest to 11th-fastest and moves Marty Craggill from 11th-fastest to 14th-fastest.

The timing & scoring system has been displaying bogus times all weekend at Pikes Peak, and frequently did not display riders’ new times as they completed laps.

Timing & scoring problems have been present to some degree at every race this year, including a complete system meltdown at California Speedway.

At just before 4:00 p.m. Saturday, AMA Pro Racing issued a statement regarding the timing & scoring problem, which reads as follows:

“31 May, 2003
“Statement from AMA Pro Road Racing

“Due to a hardware problem with the AMB transponder/decoder attached to the loop from the last segment, (turn six to the start/finish line), times for the Supersport and Formula Xtreme qualifying have been revised.

“The decoder has been replaced and times for the Supersport and Formula Xtreme qualifing have been set from the back up system. Times from the Superbike qualifying (Friday) are also being revised.”

The biggest changes in the Supersport grid affected Yamaha–Damon Buckmaster had pole position taken away from him and given to teammate Aaron Gobert, who was originally scored as fourth-fastest.

“I’m still not 100 percent sure that they’re correct,” said Yamaha Team Manager Tom Halverson. “It’s really unfortunate because there’s a Championship point on the line here. The guys trust the times they’re getting on the TVs out there to strategize their sessions. Unfortunately Damon (Buckmaster) thought he had the pole, so he sat out probably a good two-thirds of the sessions because he thought he was on the pole. Had he known the times were bogus I’m sure he would’ve went back out there and tried to do better. So that was really unfortunate.

“On the other side Jamie (Hacking) he was really right up front, but they had him back in eighth. So he could have thrown it down the road trying to qualify at the front thinking he was really back when he was really farther up than he was.

“It’s really kind of bad for both those guys. Probably both of them are a bit angry right now, understandably. It’s unfortunate for the AMA. I guess they had a glitch in the system, but maybe they should have acted a lot sooner.”

Halverson said AMA Pro Racing should have acted sooner because several teams recognized timing and scoring discrepancies earlier in the weekend.

“The overall times were pretty accurate, but there were some discrepancies in the splits,” explained Halverson. “All of a sudden Damon and Jamie were down in the teens for the split from turn seven to the start/finish. So we knew something wasn’t really correct there. I didn’t really think that was going to play into combined lap times for qualifying, so I didn’t raise the issue. But maybe we should have because there was definitely some discrepancies in the splits.”

Asked if the times taken on their teams’ watches and data gathering equipment matched the times displayed by AMA Pro Racing timing and scoring monitors, Aaron Yates’ Crew Chief Chris Weidl said, “No. And it’s not a tenth or two tenths or three tenths – it’s a second!”

Yates, overheard the conversation and added, “Yesterday I was doing 56.0s. I came in and they (AMA) had me at a 55.0.”

When asked if his team’s times matched the times provided by AMA timing and scoring, Kawasaki Racing Team Manager Michael Preston said, “No.”

Asked the same question, Attack Suzuki Team Owner/Crew Chief Richard Stanboli also said, “No.”

American Honda’s Merlyn Plumlee, Crew Chief for Ben Bostrom, said, “We haven’t had any problems at all.”

Revised Overall Supersport Qualifying Results:

1. Aaron Gobert, Yamaha, 55.547
2. Damon Buckmaster, Yamaha, 55.706
3. Marty Craggill, Honda, 55.779
4. Jamie Hacking, Yamaha, 55.876
5. Jason DiSalvo, Yamaha, 55.968
6. Jake Zemke, Honda, 56.086
7. Ben Spies, Suzuki, 56.094
8. Miguel Duhamel, Honda, 56.201
9. Tommy Hayden, Kawasaki, 56.253
10. Alex Gobert, Honda, 56.259
11. Pascal Picotte, Yamaha, 56.502
12. Tony Meiring, Kawasaki, 56.573
13. Ty Howard, Honda, 56.573
14. Jamie Stauffer, Suzuki, 56.855
15. Roger Lee Hayden, Honda, 56.984
16. Doug Chandler, Honda, 57.026
17. Jason Curtis, Honda, 57.402
18. Thad Halsmer, Yamaha, 57.496
19. Chris Peris, Honda, 57.582
20. Craig Connell, Honda, 57.801


Revised Formula Xtreme Qualifying Times:

1. Ben Spies, Suzuki, 55.032
2. Damon Buckmaster, Yamaha, 55.191
3. Jake Zemke, Honda, 55.288
4. Adam Fergusson, Suzuki, 55.369
5. Josh Hayes, Suzuki, 55.428
6. Jason Pridmore, Suzuki, 55.454
7. Ty Howard, Honda, 55.467
8. Aaron Gobert, Yamaha, 55.615
9. Jamie Hacking, Yamaha, 55.779
10. Doug Chandler, Honda, 55.801
11. Steve Rapp, Suzuki, 55.054
12. Roger Hayden, Honda, 56.103
13. Jimmy Moore, Suzuki, 56.204
14. Marty Craggill, Honda, 56.208
15. Craig Connell, Honda, 56.365
16. Jason Curtis, Honda, 56.717
17. Goeff May, Suzuki, 57.083
18. Vincent Haskovec, Suzuki, 57.122
19. Chris Ulrich, Suzuki, 57.337
20. Mickey Lane, Suzuki, 57.346