When Miguel DuHamel matched Wayne Rainey's near decade old successive win record at Sears Point in 1995 it was clear Superbike aficionados are witnessing something quite unique in Superbike racing. DuHamel is at the top of his game, riding harder than perhaps anyone else in the series. Too, with DuHamel riding the V-four RC45 Honda there are not the phantom cat calls of his machine having an unfair advantage, a charge that haunted Doug Polen and Ducati two seasons back.

No, the 45 is not the fastest machine nor is it the hardest accelerating, Freddie Spencer's Ferracci Ducati may very well be both of those. But DuHamel's Smokin Joe's Honda RC45 is the best prepared motorcycle of the front-runners. Although DuHamel fell at Daytona and fell and soldiered on at Pomona, there have been absolutely zero mechanical DNFs this season. With that advantage DuHamel leads the AMA Superbike points standings and has a clear shot at the title.

Preparation has been the key to this run and there are plenty of responsible names behind DuHamel win streak : Team manager Martin Adams, crewchief Ray Plumb, RJR racing manager Mark Reaves and Rick Mitchell in Honda parts and accessories, among many others.

Miguel's Superbike is wrenched by one of the best - New Hampshire native Al Ludington, with assistance from West Coast technician Joe Lombardo. Ludington came to AMA Superbike racing as Dave Sadowski's mechanic at Vance and Hines in the late eighties. Shortly after Ludington moved on to Honda where he worked with Tom Kipp and Mike Smith and in 1995, DuHamel. We spoke after Sears Point about DuHamel and Ludington's incredible season.

Q. One can see how winning Superbike races animates Miguel, it must do the same for you.

A. It makes you want to win more, obviously. Yeah, it's definitely an exhilarating experience. After some of the past season we've had trying just to get the rider on the box (podium) it just makes you want o stay up there more and more.

Prior to this, Jamie James was my only other Superbike win - at Elkhart Lake in 1991. So I have multiplied my number of Superbike wins by seven this season. Between then and now we've been trying to get back up there and in that period I changed from Vance and Hines to Honda so there was an adjustment period there. But it wasn't dry either -because we won a bunch of Supersport races, a couple dozen races with Kipp and Mike Smith and the 600 Supersport championship with the Kipper. The Superbike wins have been kind of dry but the wins overall certainly have not been dry at all.

Q. You have worked with a variety of riders in the past: Jamie James, Sadowski, Tom Kipp and Mike Smith. Describe what they were like to work with.

A. Ski, Smith and Jamie, well actually all of them - a lot of grit. They give everything they got when they go out o the racetrack and I try and return that on my end of things. Ski was my first rider and he was real ... well, if you know Ski, (he has) a lot of heart. He will never give up and never say die.

I wasn't working on the Superbike but I was involved with the team when he was riding the VHR Suzuki (and it) died on the warm-up lap at Elkhart Lake in 1989. Sadowski, by himself, physically lifted the bike over the fence so that he could push it back to the pit on the return road and get back on the grid. That's a lot of heart right there.

Jamie is just about as laid back as you can get. But as we all know he's like a bulldog with a piece of meat when he's got the leader in sight. He just won't give up. He's another guy who has a lot of grit out there. The thing about Jamie is that he could always dig a little deeper and get a little more if he had to. When we went to Charlotte for the first AMA race there a few seasons back, we were qualified about two seconds off the pace. At the very end of the session with about ten minuets remaining he came in and asked "how fast we gotta go, Al?" I told him one - twelve or whatever the lap time was. He asks, "Well, what am I doin'?" I told him a minute fourteen. He says put a tire on it Al and I did and sent him out. He rips off some hot laps and comes in sitting second on the grid. He lifted up his shield, shut the bike off and said, "Damn, that was scary. I hope we don't race that fast." That's digging deep right there.

Tom Kipp is another very laid back guy, never got too excited, never gets angry about anything but when it's time to ride, off he goes.

Smith is a different story all together. Mike is a real heady kind of guy, he has to get his head tuned just to the right spot to get the most out of himself. If he had confidence in the bike and confidence in the mechanic's ability not to let anything fall off, he was as tough as the next guy.

I've been fortunate to work with a lot of really good guys.

They were all very different, but had one thing in common and that's when push came to shove - they all pushed as hard as the next guy. They're all guys that when you slam em, they'll slam you back.

There's guys out there on the grid that rely a lot on technique and natural ability and stuff. And if somebody makes a run at em, they'll say, 'okay I can't run with this guy'. But these guys, you slam em, they'll slam you right back and from a mechanic's point of view (that) is great. You don't want to be working with a guy that is going to give up or is going to sit on the grid eighth fastest thinking, 'Well, there's seven guys out here faster than I am, seven guys that got me beat.' You want a guy that says I can beat everyone of these guys. And that's what all the guys I have worked with have in common.

Q. And how is Miguel to work with?

A. He's fast right away. From the first practice he's ready to rock. I don't know if that is from the GPs or from international racing but he is about the only guy who is going very fast in the first practice session. World Superbike, they come out of the box hard on Friday ready to ride. AMA is getting more like that but it seems like everybody kinda doddles through Friday, getting the hang of things and on Saturday they are getting ready to go and on Saturday afternoon they put their head down and go. And then on Sunday they get serious and race.

Miguel comes out Friday morning serious as a heart attack. He comes out ready to beat everybody else and that is just a total dedication\focus type thing.

The thing that impresses me with testing (with Miguel) is that he doesn't test at a race pace or a record breaking pace. He's not big on testing, I don't think it fires him up. But he has the ability to, like at Daytona, he can run around in the fifty-twos and know what it going to take to do fifties. A lot of guys do fifty-twos and get the bike set up start doing fifty-ones or fifties and suddenly their set up is gone out the window. Miguel thinks up to that next level.

He has a great ability to set up a motorcycle, more so than anybody I've ever dealt with. Millimeter changes are big changes to him. Some guys, you'll drop the front five millimeters and bring the back up five, (and they'll say) "well maybe it's better." With Miguel ... the back of the Supersport bike was two millimeters low at Sears because we had the shock rebuilt and for some reason it didn't get set at exactly the same length that it was before. He came in from the first session and said, "Man, this thing is a chopper. I haven't ridden this bike before. Something's wrong here." Two millimeter difference in the rear ride height.

Q. It's interesting that the Honda has worked everywhere the series has been since June and most impressively, won on a variety of different tracks.

A. A good chassis set up is a good chassis set up. Once you get things where you want them - rake, trail, swingarm angle etc., then it's just a matter of a click here or a click there. If it's real drastic, maybe you change your spring rate a little bit.

It's interesting that you say that because at every race track it's been, okay, who's going to make a run at us this week? Oh, it the Kawi this weekend, oh it's the Suzuki at Mid-Ohio or the Yamaha at Laguna. And you're right that nobody has been as consistently close, but (the RC45) came to us as a pretty good package from HRC and from there it was just a matter of juggling things around and getting the bike comfortable for Miguel, just a matter of fine tuning it.

Q. What are the final laps like for you before the checkered flag?

A. Just cross your fingers and say "Do it, man." I don't know how anybody else is, but I am constantly talking him through the last few lap, cmon cmon, don't put a foot wrong now ... and pointing to my head as he comes by to remind him to think, which is more for my use than for him.

Miguel watches his pit board pretty well but he likes to see his lap times in tenths of a second which is kinda unusual.

Q. The Superbike championship is definitely in the cards now but it didn't look that way earlier in the season. Did you ever write it off?

A. At the beginning of the season the point was to do as well as you can. After Pomona (where Miguel fell and finished poorly) ... the championship was always in our minds, from the word go the plan was to win both championships. And after Pomona, we said to do it we're going to have to win all the rest of the races, period.

I think after Miguel rode the bike in the rain at Laguna he gained a lot of confidence in the bike and the package. Things happen a lot sooner in the rain than they do in the dry - say the front will tuck at a hundred and fifty in the dry, in the rain it'll do it at a hundred and twenty. You can get to the point where the bike will do the same things only at a lower speed.

After Laguna he was very confident and said, okay, the bike is real close, a few more changes and it will be ready to go. Each race his confidence and the bike progressed a little bit and it has been just an unbelievable run of wins. I've never seen anything like it.

Q. Did you think mid-run that three was the most you could do or ...

A. I thought the biggest problem might be the races after June. We had great motivation in June, winning all three races in successive weeks and the motivation was not difficult to keep fresh. But after the break, once he'd been off the bike for some time I thought perhaps that might be a problem. I felt once we got the momentum we could keep it, the trick would be going off the road, going home for a month and coming back and beating these guys again. I thought if we could do that we'd be in good shape. And, that's what happened. He didn't beat everybody at Brainerd - he smoked em. He was the fastest guy in every session save one all the way through. Once he did that I knew we had the top dog here and I thought we could make it happen.

Q. Are you thinking about the Superbike championship on a daily basis now or are you trying to put it out of your mind?

A. Twenty-four hours a day. And the thing that has gotten us here is the team. Yeah, the bikes are good and the riders are the best but it's the team that has gotten us here. And it is a team effort too. I've worked on teams that were a team in name only and the only thing the personnel had in common was that we wore the same uniforms. No information was shared between the two crews and it was very mentally hard to work in that environment.

Now, Merlyn Plumlee will share his knowledge with myself and I do the same with him. We test things when the time gets short, you try this shock, I'll try that tire and we'll exchange notes later. Bob Hale, Mike's Dad, if he is caught up on Mike's bike will come over and run tires for us or whatever needs doing from an engine swap to running for a filter. That's a team. It's that camaraderie that has gotten us where we are - one, two in the Superbike championship.

Q. But DuHamel and Hale ride with drastically different styles so set up information must be useless to the other rider.

A. Hale rides and sets the bike up for maximum corner speed which is good but the tires will not last. Like at Sears - he was out front in the race, sliding that thing sideways and running it through the corner on a real hard pace. A lot of lean angle and a lot of corner speed. On the third lap. I was thinking, slow that thing down boy, you have twenty laps left.

Miguel is a little more experienced than Mike and he is very good at saving the tires. Miguel runs in hard on the brakes, turns hard while he is on the brake and then carries a little less corner speed and sets himself up for the drive out of the corner. That's reflected in their set up - Miguel uses a lot more spring in the front and a lot more oil in the front. Mike has some lessons to learn about saving the tires.

At Brainerd Miguel and Smith were pretty clear at one point late in the race running one-two. He came by and I gave him the L5 board (five laps remaining) and he gave me the thumbs up. Next time he came by he was in the lead with a three tenths pad over Smith. He told me later that he said to himself when he saw L5 "Tires, I have been very good to you. Now you are going to be good to me."

Q. How much maintenance does a Honda Superbike receive between say, Saturday morning practice and the race on Sunday afternoon?

A. Oil and filter every evening of course.

Typically it goes like this: you put a fresh engine in and go to the race. Usually on Friday night we do a gearbox - we collect the information from the telemetry system and the information from Miguel as to what ratios we're going to need for each particular corner - that's a typical Friday night. The engine comes out, we split the cases, do the gearbox. Of course Ray (Plumb) looks at the bearings while we're in there and it goes back together. Saturday we hope we made the gearbox guesses right or else the box comes back out on Saturday night. If we hit it right it's just oil and filter the bike for the remainder of the weekend.

The bike is constantly checked over for loose nuts and bolts and things like that. We check the valve clearances on the back cylinder because that cover comes off pretty easy, it's pretty accessible. If it looks like something is up we'll go in and do the front ones too. Typically everything works fine and looks fine - it's a real, real reliable motor. Sunday before the race we usually put a clutch in it and that's about the size of it.

Q. Have you ever had the opportunity to ride the Superbike?

A. The RC45 I have not ridden. The RC30 and the OWO1 Yamaha I rode and I imagine the day will come when I can sneak the Superbike out for a ride.

It's a wild ride, any Superbike, it's just so hyper. Those things are so totally bad you can't even comprehend it. You roll it on at a hundred mph in third gear, which is about six thousand rpm and by the time it's getting to nine or nine-five it's ripping your head off and you are thinking seriously about what you're doing. And you haven't even gotten into the power yet. At about eleven grand you say, that's about enough, I'm going to die if I don't let off. You grab a couple fingers of front brake and the thing just about throws you over the bubble. You stop the bike and think, how do these guys ride these things?

It really gives you an in your face idea of just how talented and special these athletes are that ride Superbikes.

Q. The results from the WSC round at Laguna Seca must have been quite satisfying for you and Miguel. To be thumping world class riders and teams is a magnificent accomplishment.

A. We kind of went in the underdogs. We had a home territory advantage, but I don't think anybody really expected much as the World Superbike guys are a tough crowd. Going in we talked about it a little bit and I would have been real happy with a sixth place finish, so needless to say I was ecstatic with a third and a fourth.

We had done some testing there throughout the season and we didn't have to waste a day getting a baseline going. But one thing that Miguel said that made me feel good is that when we went to the WSC race we had a racebike. When we were there in May and before that testing, that thing (RC45) was a milk truck. So we obviously made some gains in that amount of time. Sometimes it is hard to gauge your progress but when you can go to a race track a couple of months after you'd originally went there and the bike is drastically improved, two seconds faster - you feel good about that.

Q. You have worked in an environment where there were plenty of hands with around four or five people working hands-on on the motorcycle. Now it's just you and Joey (Lombardo) for both the 600 and the Superbike. Which do you prefer?

A. First of all, I have implicit trust and faith in Joe Lombardo, he has dome a fantastic job this year on the Superbike and on the Supersport bike. To answer your question I think somewhere in the middle would probably be the best. Somebody has the responsibility of over-seeing the bikes but there are times when we get short on time and you really have to trust the people you work with.

Check , check and double check is the motto but some guys are very peculiar about who they will let touch the bike. But with Joey and Ray (Plumb) on our team I will step back and say, okay, you check it over.

Sometimes things are a little rushed, especially when we are hunting for a set-up and then we could use a third guy just to run tires to Dunlop. Sometimes there will be a guy spectating that asks all the right questions and seems knowledgeable and smart enough to do only what he is told to do or touch and we'll draft him (in). Put a shirt on buddy, you're the new tire boy.

Q. You and Miguel work out together in the American Honda gym. Can you kick his ass on any of the equipment?

A. We work out whenever we get the chance, we run together and lift some weights. He does a lot of bicycling which I don't do much of and sometimes we get out and ride dirt bikes and stuff. Running - Miguel doesn't have the gearing, he can't keep up, he's too short. Plus I have been running a long time. Weights, he's real tenacious and just won't give up. As far as the amount of weight he can push we're pretty comparable and he's a lot smaller guy. Anything that involves climbing on a motorcycle - forget it. He dusts me.

But anything that doesn't involve riding a motorcycle - I'll give him a run. Even bowling, eh, Miguel?