It sounds crazy, but former AMA Superbike Champion Ben Bostrom, 36, is confident he can win his second and possibly third AMA Pro National Guard Superbike races of the season during the Suzuki White Lightning AMA Pro Superbike Nationals August 13-15 at VIRginia International Raceway in spite of the fact that his broken left thumb is locked straight by a series of pins and one long screw, which is actually protruding from the tip of the digit. Bostrom suffered a broken bone in his left thumb and a detached tendon in a crash during qualifying July 16 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. With his thumb swollen, discolored and essentially unusable, Bostrom rode his Pat Clark Motorsports Yamaha YZF-R1 to a close runner-up finish and a fourth in that weekend’s Superbike races. Then exactly one week later (July 25), and with no significant medical treatment to his thumb, Bostrom won the AMA Pro Superbike race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca — his first AMA Pro Superbike victory in six years, no less. The morning after taking that victory, July 26, Bostrom had surgery to reattach his tendon and set his broken thumb bone with pins and a long screw that goes down through all of his thumb’s joints. Today, just 11 days after that surgery, Bostrom rode a one-hour stint of laps in extremely hot and humid conditions around VIR’s narrow and greasy 2.25-mile North Course to help Team Zyvax R1 win the four-hour Round Six of the Bridgestone WERA National Endurance Championship. “The bike doesn’t have any electronic boxes on the left,” Bostrom told Roadracingworld.com Friday, shortly before stepping on the podium at VIR, “so we just cut the circle off the grip so I can stick my thumb there and let it run parallel with the handlebar. It was all good. “I just had to try and reach for the clutch more gingerly. When I first got on I reached out to snap the clutch and Ooooh! The pressure when you try to pull in the clutch and bend the pin that’s set through all the bones – it’s just gnarly. I said, ‘OK, chill out.’ So I was reaching very carefully and releasing it [clutch lever] very carefully, too.” Asked directly if he felt another AMA Superbike win is possible next weekend, Bostrom said, “Yeah. I’m thinking that that’s pretty sure, actually. I know [Josh] Hayes loves this place, but I’m thinking I love it more than him now. It’s becoming my favorite track. I think the old pavement”¦it slides around like an old fire road. It’s so fun. And the layout of the track is fantastic. I didn’t realize that before. Last year, I started to have a little fun. This year, I’m thinking, man, this is one of my favorite tracks.”