Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By Beth Wyse

The third and final day of AMA team testing at Road Atlanta was delayed yet again as water running onto turn five was again dried as much as possible.

Nicky Hayden continued to be the fastest among all of the riders present, running a 1:23.6 on his Honda RC51 Superbike during the morning. His time was nearly half-a-second faster than his best time on day two of testing.

“We have some stuff from last year that we want to go back and look at a little more. Today we have different transmissions in the bikes,” said Hayden, referring to the two Superbikes he is testing at Road Atlanta. “(We have) different lengths, different shocks on one bike and we’re going back and forth between the two.”

Miguel Duhamel is still riding both of his bikes, as well. He is testing two types of Dunlop race tires today.

Most teams are taking today to work on basic race set-ups. Yamaha’s Anthony Gobert is getting quicker on his Superbike, running a time of 24.2 in the morning session. He is not doing as well on his 600, however.

“The 600 is struggling a little bit,” said Gobert. It’s tough when you have two bikes (to test).”

Damon Buckmaster rode his Yamaha YZF-R6 all morning and switched to the YZF-R1 for the afternoon. He was just working on basic setup.

Doug Chandler made minor changes to his Ducati 998RS, and was most concerned with getting more comfortable on the bike. He’s been riding one bike for most of the test, but also has a second bike he spent some time on. “It was a very productive three days, so I’m happy,” said Chandler.

Tommy Hayden continued to drop his times on the Kawasaki ZX6, running 1:28.1s, about half-a-second faster than his best time yesterday. “We changed the suspension a lot last night,” explained Hayden. “I feel a lot more comfortable today and I’ve been able to go a lot faster.”

Tony Meiring has finally dropped into the 1:29s on his 600 and feels much more comfortable on the Kawasaki. He is very happy with his progress over the past three days.

The Yoshimura Blimpie Suzuki team is working on just the Superbike Suzuki GSX-R750s today, as Jamie Hacking and Aaron Yates are not riding their GSX-R600 Supersport machines. Mat Mladin has moved into the high 1:23s for his lap times, not giving Nicky Hayden much of a comfort zone. Yates has dropped his times to 1:24.0s.

Valvoline EMGO Suzuki’s Chris Ulrich and Tom Kipp worked on bike set-ups and tested out different Michelin tires today. Tom Kipp spent the first part of his morning on his Suzuki GSX-R600, dropping his lap times by half-a-second over his previous best. New fork internals have fixed a chattering problem that Kipp had yesterday. Ulrich also went faster, turning a 1:27.4 on his Superstock GSX-R750. This afternoon Ulrich will ride a GSX-R1000 Formula Xtreme bike for the first time.