ZEMKE KEEPS AMA SUPERBIKE LEAD AT SONOMA
Michael Jordan Motorsports maintains the points lead after the weekend's seventh and eighth races of the 2010 AMA Pro National Guard American Superbike Championship at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California.
National Guard Jordan Suzuki's Jake Zemke scored a fourth-placed finish on Saturday and finished sixth in Sunday's race. Aaron Yates' replacement rider, Brett McCormick, was running seventh when he experienced a mechanical issue during Saturday's race and finished 13th on Sunday after a minor get-off in turn 10 early in the race.
On Saturday, Zemke maintained second place for a number of laps before slipping into fourth in the final stages of the race. On Sunday, Zemke, slightly off the pace, ran in fourth place throughout most of the race until the late stages when he was passed and ended up sixth. Zemke holds onto a four point lead in the Championship heading to the next event at Road America.
"On Saturday, my bike was moving around quite a bit," said Zemke. "It was pretty good early on and we were able to get up to second. I didn't have a huge gap or anything, but I felt comfortable where I was. We definitely started losing grip from the rear tyre. I couldn't really get off the corners. And knowing that, I was trying to push harder going into the corners to try and make up for it. That was causing the bike to move around quite a bit and it was kind of the end of our deal. We faded back from there and tried to minimise the damage and maximize what we could."
"Sunday was a long race," Zemke continued. "The times were a lot quicker in the beginning of the race and we definitely had a better pace at the beginning of it. I just ended up glazing the brakes over and I couldn't get into the corners the way I needed to. But we held on and we're still in the Championship lead, so that's an important thing. We're constantly working and moving forward and pretty soon the 54 will be back up on top. Wisconsin is one of my favourite tracks and I'm definitely looking forward to that - getting to something a little bit faster and flowing. I think that'll suit our bike real well."
During the weekend, Jake Zemke's National Guard Suzuki GSX-R1000 was proudly sporting the state patch of the California National Guard's largest combat brigade, the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. The corresponding National Guard state patches will be placed on Zemke's Suzuki for the remainder of the 2010 season.
