Britain’s Honda’s Neil Hodgson and Miguel Duhamel gained valuable
experience during the weekend’s Superbike races at Barber Motorsports
Park that they plan to put to good use when they return to California
for the team’s home race next weekend.

Hodgson threatened to take his first podium of the season in Sunday’s
third round of the AMA Superbike Championship, held on a sunny day in
front of 28,000 fans. The former World Superbike Champion was chasing
the fourth placed rider when he made a pair of costly mistakes while
braking hard for a downhill left hand hairpin. On successive laps,
and in the same corner, the penalty was one placing. But two laps
from the finish he fought back to regain one of the spots and finish
fifth. He’d also finished fifth in Saturday’s Superbike race, in
which he was hampered by a bad start.

Duhamel finished just behind Hodgson in Saturday’s 28-lap race.
Sunday he had less success. In an effort to gain positions, the team
tried a different set-up for the scenic and undulating 2.38-mile
track. Unfortunately, the new set-up wasn’t effective and Duhamel
struggled to keep pace with the riders just ahead. He finished eighth.

The teams now get little rest. Next weekend the series moves to
California Speedway in Fontana, just northwest of American Honda’s
headquarters in Torrance, California, for the fourth and fifth rounds
of the championship.

Neil Hodgson, 5th, 5th "Saturday, everything was about the start
really. I got it all wrong. I had a bad first two corners and the
race were over really. I had a similar race Sunday, but I didn’t get
the bad start. Similar lap times and stayed consistent. You know, I
feel like we weren’t that far off the podium today. I was fourth for
a while. I made a couple of mistakes and then got, not flustered, but
then started trying a little bit too hard and then lost my rhythm. We
know where we need to improve the bike, I know where I need to
improve myself. And I think I’m pretty confident we can turn up at
Fontana (California Speedway) next weekend and be either on it or
close to the box. At this stage, that’s pretty much all we can do.
What we need most is, I think, we have to try to eliminate some
chatter. The problem is mid-race to the end, the chatter’s not
allowing us to actually throw the bike into the corners; you’ve got
to roll into the corners. It’s really hard; once you lose a bit of
grip it starts chattering. You then almost got to sit back and change
your riding style. And it almost looks like you’ve given up, but
you’ve not, but you’ve got to be extremely aggressive with it and
it’ll hop and you’ll miss the apex. So you have to ride slightly
different, which is very frustrating. But we’ve got some rough ideas
about how to fix that. "

Miguel Duhamel, 6th, 8th: "Today was not quite as good as Saturday.
Today I got a decent start, not as good as yesterday, but that wasn’t
the big problem. We tried to make the bike better but we made it not
quite as good as yesterday. But it was still good enough to race up
there and Aaron (Yates) and I were having a great battle out there;
unfortunately it was for seventh. I was hoping to stay in touch with
those guys, but I wasn’t able to pull it off. We take what we learn
from here and go to Fontana (California Speedway) and try to do better. "

American Honda Road Race Manager Ron Heben: "We didn’t have so bad of
a weekend. Obviously, we challenge ourselves when we qualify so
poorly. Qualifying seventh and 11th is going to make your job really
tough for Neil and Miguel to get up there on the podium and that’s
really where we want to be. We’re going to get there. We’ve just got
to keep working at it. There were a couple of bright spots this
weekend, but certainly we’re not satisfied with what we’ve got. The
new bike continues to show improvement and hopefully Fontana
(California Speedway) we can take another step forward and get our
guys on the front row and put the new Honda on the box. "

Saturday Superbike:
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha)
3. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki)
4. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki)
5. Neil Hodgson (Honda)
6. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
7. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha)
8. Geoff May (Suzuki)
9. Chris Peris (Suzuki)
10. Jordan Szoke (Kawasaki)

Sunday Superbike:
1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Ben Spies (Suzuki)
3. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki)
4. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha)
5. Neil Hodgson (Honda)
6. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha)
7. Aaron Yates (Suzuki)
8. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
9. Matt Lynn (Honda)
10. Geoff May (Suzuki)

Championship Standings:
1. Mat Mladin (113)
2. Jason DiSalvo (88)
3. Tommy Hayden (85)
4. Ben Spies (84)
5. Neil Hodgson (76)
6. Miguel Duhamel (67)
7. Geoff May (65)
8. Jamie Hacking (63)
9. Aaron Yates/Chris Peris (600