(Photo: Evan Williams)

Hayes feels the loss of Tommy Hayden at Yoshimura has impacted Young more than the Wisconsinite may be willing to admit.

"Blake not having the teammate that he had -- maybe he's not quite as far along at developing and making improvements in a bike that's been around for a while. I think Blake is a bit of an emotional rider. It's hard to get consistent, good lap times out of Blake. And it's hard to develop a bike until you can do that. So, maybe he needed a little help from someone as steady as Tommy over there in the truck to kind of look and gauge off of in order to take it to the next level. Blake didn't even meet his own times from last year (at Road America) this year. I was able to up mine -- considerably -- and he wasn't even able to reach up and meet the goals he met last year. He was in the low '12s last year in qualifying and he never made it back to there."

It's been frequently noted (here at SPEED.com in particular) that Young holds an overwhelming advantage over Hayes in close races. In wins decided by less than a second, Young has defeated Hayes 10 times to nil. However, Hayes' bike formerly was not well suited to that sort of racing and he paid dearly for it. Now that the R1 is likely a better match for Young's GSX-R in tight quarters, Hayes is taking full advantage of those newfound strengths and, as a result, the races aren't winding up all that close, preventing Hayes from getting his proper revenge.

"Well there you go," Josh said. "All of the sudden I have a bike that I can accelerate with him and I can run on top speed with him, and now I'm able to put together laps or get through the right sections… At Road America, the last segment and the first segment are the two fastest segments on the race track. You've got the long back straightaway and the long front straightaway and the run down into 5. But I had consistently six tenths on him in the second segment and four to five tenths on him in the third segment. So there's over a second right there in two parts of the racetrack that are not high-speed parts. That's all the twisty bits and the Carousel. So, I don't know. I don't think you can cheat and get 3.3 seconds in one lap." (Note: Hayes had a 3.3 second lead after the opening lap in Saturday's race at Road America.)

Looking farther down the field, Hayes hypothesized on the recent struggles of Roger Hayden, who has put the #54 bike on the ground on a number of occasions while attempting to regain the sort of competitiveness he steadily worked to attain in 2011.

"Well, I think Roger is actually putting in the effort but he's making mistakes. You saw me make a few mistakes -- I had two big thumps in Atlanta and a small one in Infineon (but a costly one). That's part of that learning process. That's something I've noticed in my career; when I try to take something to another level, I make a few mistakes along the way and then all of the sudden you are doing those things consistently without making those mistakes. You figure it out, you learn, and get through it. I don't know what clicks, I don't necessarily see it or feel it, but all of the sudden, you're putting the same effort in and you're not falling down, you're going fast.

"Roger is in the process of making those mistakes right now, trying to take it to another level. I don't know -- I don't walk down and hang around the truck, and I don't ask too many questions, so I don't really know where they are at with that motorcycle. I don't think there's any question that they have a bike that's capable of being up there.

"I think Roger is a good rider; I don't know how good of a Superbike rider he is. Does he have Superbike race wins (in him)? Honestly, I don't know. He's spent on a factory Kawasaki, he's spent time on a World Superbike Kawasaki, and then he's come to this Suzuki. I don't know. He's still learning quite a bit, while I've been somewhere that I've been comfortable and confident. I don't have to sweat the small stuff; I don't have to try catching up all the time. I just focus on riding and doing my thing. (At Road America) we weren't looking for time. I was able to go out and ride and work on me, not the motorcycle all the time. I don't know if they need to lean more one way or the other, but you know, it's hard to say without having your hands on the controls."