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AMA Pro Superbike
AMA SBK: 2012 Championship Prediction Countdown: #2 & #1
The 2102 AMA Pro Superbike season has finally arrived and with it comes SPEED.com's final predictions for the season's champion.
Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki's Blake Young (Photo: Brian J Nelson)
PROGRAMMING NOTE: The AMA Pro Road Racing season opener will air back-to-back-to-back in a three-race block (Superbike Race 1, Daytona 200, Superbike Race 2) on Saturday, March 17 starting at 1:30pm ET on SPEED.
The AMA Pro Superbikes are just hours away from taking to the famed high banks of Daytona International Speedway and officially kick of the 2012 season.
Before we name our championship picks, let's review #5-#3:
Evan Williams
5. Larry Pegram - Foremost Insurance Pegram Racing BMW
4. Josh Herrin - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
3. Roger Hayden - National Guard Jordan Suzuki
Chris Martin
5. Josh Herrin - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
4. Ben Bostrom - Jordan Suzuki
3. Roger Hayden - National Guard Jordan Suzuki
And now for our final predictions…
Evan Williams: Runner-Up: Blake Young - Yoshimura Suzuki, '12 Champion: Josh Hayes - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
Blake Young is the most talented rider in the series. He can kick it up to an intense level and make up speed. He can manage risk and is very good at finding a way to go fast late in the race when it counts. He's aggressive and has great racecraft... a fantastic rider.
But so is Josh Hayes.
Young did not crash in 2011, even though he would hang it out quite often. Hayes dumped it quite a bit, but never in the races. The difference between first and second could be one crash and it is more likely Blake makes the mistake this time.
Hayes won again in 2011 despite having generally bad luck early in the year. He couldn't break Blake Young and ended up in chase mode through the end of the season. He still got it done, though, earning championship number two despite getting 'out won' seven races to three.
There's no reason to expect any less from Haves and the Graves Yamaha team in 2012. Hayes is riding high after his Valencia MotoGP wild card and he's at the zenith of his career.
Chris Martin: Runner-Up: Josh Hayes - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha, '12 Champion: Blake Young - Yoshimura Suzuki
Hayes is the series' fastest and most consistent rider. That's a pretty good recipe for success, one that has resulted in two straight AMA Pro Superbike titles. The smart money suggests he'll get #3 in 2012.
I guess my money isn't quite so smart.
The fact remains that even with Hayes' remarkably even excellence last year, he still needed an off day from Young in New Jersey to claim the title. And as sharply honed as his riding has been, it's hard to imagine him performing any better than he already has.
This prediction is not an indictment of Hayes, not at all, but in '11 he seemed to have found the upper limits of his machinery and too often those limits proved just an fraction of a second less than what were require to claim the checkered flag first. Whether or not his team has been able to somehow draw a bit more blood from that R1-shaped turnip will be a major deciding factor in this year's title fight.
Meanwhile, you would think the less experienced Young still has some room to grow. And if he's better in '12 than he was in '11, he's going to be a serious beast to deal with on the track. His natural race instincts are superb and he somehow managed to stay upright the entire season despite his unorthodox style and unbridled aggression (I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that happened).
The reasons that Young could falter are many.
He'll likely need to keep that no crash streak alive a second consecutive season to have any chance at beating Hayes (and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that might happen).
He needs to figure out how to collect a few more bonus points because winning half the races and finishing on the podium in all but two races with a worst finish of fifth wasn't enough to get the job done in '11.
And he'll probably be hurt a bit by the loss of Tommy Hayden as a teammate -- not that they (intentionally) worked in sync all that often, but their combined efforts on the track often prevented Hayes from escaping out front where his superior speed would have made him impossible to catch, and that ultimately allowed Young to strike late to steal away the win on multiple occasions. Blake may need Roger Hayden to step up and fill that role in '12, which is no guarantee.
But ultimately, Young is still improving by leaps and bounds and he should not be lacking for motivation to up his game even further this season - he'll be looking to use 2012 as a springboard to international competition in 2013, and like Ben Spies, the man whose boots he's capably filled at Yoshimura Suzuki, he'll first need to depose the reigning AMA king to truly legitimize any such move.
SPEED.com Motorcycle Racing Editor Chris Martin saw Eddie Lawson win aboard a Kawasaki the first time he attended an AMA Superbike race and witnessed Ben Bostrom win a World Superbike race aboard a V&H Ducati the first time he worked one. He has written about AMA SBK, WSBK, and MotoGP for SPEED.com since 2003. Chris is now on Twitter.
The AMA Pro Superbikes are just hours away from taking to the famed high banks of Daytona International Speedway and officially kick of the 2012 season.
Before we name our championship picks, let's review #5-#3:
Evan Williams
5. Larry Pegram - Foremost Insurance Pegram Racing BMW
4. Josh Herrin - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
3. Roger Hayden - National Guard Jordan Suzuki
Chris Martin
5. Josh Herrin - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
4. Ben Bostrom - Jordan Suzuki
3. Roger Hayden - National Guard Jordan Suzuki
And now for our final predictions…
Evan Williams: Runner-Up: Blake Young - Yoshimura Suzuki, '12 Champion: Josh Hayes - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha
Blake Young is the most talented rider in the series. He can kick it up to an intense level and make up speed. He can manage risk and is very good at finding a way to go fast late in the race when it counts. He's aggressive and has great racecraft... a fantastic rider.
But so is Josh Hayes.
Young did not crash in 2011, even though he would hang it out quite often. Hayes dumped it quite a bit, but never in the races. The difference between first and second could be one crash and it is more likely Blake makes the mistake this time.
Hayes won again in 2011 despite having generally bad luck early in the year. He couldn't break Blake Young and ended up in chase mode through the end of the season. He still got it done, though, earning championship number two despite getting 'out won' seven races to three.
There's no reason to expect any less from Haves and the Graves Yamaha team in 2012. Hayes is riding high after his Valencia MotoGP wild card and he's at the zenith of his career.
Chris Martin: Runner-Up: Josh Hayes - Monster Energy Graves Yamaha, '12 Champion: Blake Young - Yoshimura Suzuki
Hayes is the series' fastest and most consistent rider. That's a pretty good recipe for success, one that has resulted in two straight AMA Pro Superbike titles. The smart money suggests he'll get #3 in 2012.
I guess my money isn't quite so smart.
The fact remains that even with Hayes' remarkably even excellence last year, he still needed an off day from Young in New Jersey to claim the title. And as sharply honed as his riding has been, it's hard to imagine him performing any better than he already has.
This prediction is not an indictment of Hayes, not at all, but in '11 he seemed to have found the upper limits of his machinery and too often those limits proved just an fraction of a second less than what were require to claim the checkered flag first. Whether or not his team has been able to somehow draw a bit more blood from that R1-shaped turnip will be a major deciding factor in this year's title fight.
Meanwhile, you would think the less experienced Young still has some room to grow. And if he's better in '12 than he was in '11, he's going to be a serious beast to deal with on the track. His natural race instincts are superb and he somehow managed to stay upright the entire season despite his unorthodox style and unbridled aggression (I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that happened).
The reasons that Young could falter are many.
He'll likely need to keep that no crash streak alive a second consecutive season to have any chance at beating Hayes (and I'm still trying to figure out exactly how that might happen).
He needs to figure out how to collect a few more bonus points because winning half the races and finishing on the podium in all but two races with a worst finish of fifth wasn't enough to get the job done in '11.
And he'll probably be hurt a bit by the loss of Tommy Hayden as a teammate -- not that they (intentionally) worked in sync all that often, but their combined efforts on the track often prevented Hayes from escaping out front where his superior speed would have made him impossible to catch, and that ultimately allowed Young to strike late to steal away the win on multiple occasions. Blake may need Roger Hayden to step up and fill that role in '12, which is no guarantee.
But ultimately, Young is still improving by leaps and bounds and he should not be lacking for motivation to up his game even further this season - he'll be looking to use 2012 as a springboard to international competition in 2013, and like Ben Spies, the man whose boots he's capably filled at Yoshimura Suzuki, he'll first need to depose the reigning AMA king to truly legitimize any such move.
SPEED.com Motorcycle Racing Editor Chris Martin saw Eddie Lawson win aboard a Kawasaki the first time he attended an AMA Superbike race and witnessed Ben Bostrom win a World Superbike race aboard a V&H Ducati the first time he worked one. He has written about AMA SBK, WSBK, and MotoGP for SPEED.com since 2003. Chris is now on Twitter.
AMA SBK Miller Motorsports Park
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