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AMA Pro Superbike
AMA SBK: 2012 - Pivotal Year: Blake Young
As big as 2011 was for rising AMA Pro Superbike star Blake Young, 2012 may be even bigger...
(Photo: Evan Williams)
Blake Young was the breakout star of AMA Pro Racing in 2011 and 2012 will be a pivotal year for the Yoshimura Suzuki star and Wisconsin native.
Young, 24 years old, made a huge leap last year and outperformed the expectations of most observers. He won seven times and took the title fight with Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes to the last lap of the last race before coming up just short of the crown.
It was the way he won as much as the actual winning. Young proved he had the courage and drive to be the toughest man in AMA Pro Superbike on the final lap, winning big races at places like Daytona and Utah with stellar racecraft. Riders do not want to find themselves in a late-race scrap with the paddock’s biggest Green Bay Packers fan.
Blake is Young by name, but also young by nature in that he’s still a developing rider. This was Young’s third year with the Yoshimura Suzuki Superbike team, but the first two were most notable by the chunks of races he missed with injuries. He’s tough once the race starts and was off the podium only twice (a fourth on Saturday at Infineon and a fifth on Saturday at New Jersey.) The area where he needs to improve is being fast from the opening laps of practice and getting to the green flag with a bike that’s ready to contend.
As a raw Superbike pilot who’d never really contended for an AMA Pro championship prior to last year's breakthrough season, one can’t find much fault in Blake’s 2011. It was a fantastic performance.
Looking at it from the stricter perspective of rating a contender racing in a difficult championship, he had a few holes. Young played catch-up too much during the weekends and had three races (the aforementioned Saturday races at Infineon and New Jersey, plus the race at Laguna Seca) where he needed to do better.
Young, 24 years old, made a huge leap last year and outperformed the expectations of most observers. He won seven times and took the title fight with Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes to the last lap of the last race before coming up just short of the crown.
It was the way he won as much as the actual winning. Young proved he had the courage and drive to be the toughest man in AMA Pro Superbike on the final lap, winning big races at places like Daytona and Utah with stellar racecraft. Riders do not want to find themselves in a late-race scrap with the paddock’s biggest Green Bay Packers fan.
Blake is Young by name, but also young by nature in that he’s still a developing rider. This was Young’s third year with the Yoshimura Suzuki Superbike team, but the first two were most notable by the chunks of races he missed with injuries. He’s tough once the race starts and was off the podium only twice (a fourth on Saturday at Infineon and a fifth on Saturday at New Jersey.) The area where he needs to improve is being fast from the opening laps of practice and getting to the green flag with a bike that’s ready to contend.
As a raw Superbike pilot who’d never really contended for an AMA Pro championship prior to last year's breakthrough season, one can’t find much fault in Blake’s 2011. It was a fantastic performance.
Looking at it from the stricter perspective of rating a contender racing in a difficult championship, he had a few holes. Young played catch-up too much during the weekends and had three races (the aforementioned Saturday races at Infineon and New Jersey, plus the race at Laguna Seca) where he needed to do better.
AMA SBK Homestead-Miami
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