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AMA Pro Superbike
AMA SBK: Hayes Doesn’t Have Time For Games
Superbike champ Josh Hayes was immediately on the gas as he put distance between himself and his rivals on the opening day of action at Road America.
Monster Energy Graves Yamaha's Josh Hayes (Photo: Evan Williams)
PROGRAMMING NOTE: The AMA Pro Road Racing action from Road America will air on SPEED at 11:00pm ET on Saturday, June 3rd and Sunday, June 4th.
Josh Hayes not only brought the outright speed superiority he displayed at Sonoma and Miller into Road America, he took it to a new level.
The Graves Yamaha Motorsports Yamaha hero was almost immediately faster than the (very rapid) pace he managed in Wisconsin last year. In fact, Hayes' FP1 best of 2:11.554 was only about a hundredth of a second removed from the Road America Superbike lap record still owned by Mat Mladin as posted in 2007. (Note: No official "Real Superbike" lap record has yet fallen to the current generation of machines, but Hayes has been increasingly knocking on the door.)
Hayes was almost four seconds better than his rivals halfway through the first practice and ended up more than two seconds ahead at its conclusion
The story in qualifying was little different. The double champ was back into the '11s while his closest challengers were stuck in the '13s.
This weekend is huge for AMA Superbike title hopeful Blake Young, who is closer in the points standings than his recent relative run of pace compared to Hayes might suggest. The Yoshimura Suzuki pilot is in need of a big weekend in front of his home crowd to demonstrate that he has an answer for his rival's surge.
In an attempt to quickly get up to speed, Young attempted to lock onto Hayes' rear wheel on Friday but the Mississippian would have none of it.
Hayes laughed and explained, "It's pretty funny -- we've been playing the game out there. Blake's been trying to follow quite a bit this morning and I’m just not going to let him do it. It's not my job to help him race better."
Meanwhile, Hayes' teammate, Josh Herrin, put in a late flier to leap up from tenth to second on his final lap, again pushing Young to third just as he did in the race at MMP just a few days ago. Don't think for a moment that Hayes' didn't take notice. "Josh is doing a great job stepping up on the other Yamaha; he was pretty far down the list and then all the sudden really pulled things together at the end."
Asked if his sizable advantage gave him the latitude to start gunning for the ghosts Mladin and Spies as opposed to his current competitors, Hayes insisted he is still firmly focused on doing his job of beating the men he shares the track with.
"It'd be nice -- it would be great," Hayes said of potentially establishing a new lap record this weekend. "It would show how far the current bikes in their current state of tune are developing. They are a far cry from the amount of modifications they had those bikes back then.
"But I'm not so much thinking about that; I'm thinking about riding clean and putting in good laps. If I can put fast consistent ones -- faster than the other guys and make them play catch-up -- that's my goal right now."
Josh Hayes not only brought the outright speed superiority he displayed at Sonoma and Miller into Road America, he took it to a new level.
The Graves Yamaha Motorsports Yamaha hero was almost immediately faster than the (very rapid) pace he managed in Wisconsin last year. In fact, Hayes' FP1 best of 2:11.554 was only about a hundredth of a second removed from the Road America Superbike lap record still owned by Mat Mladin as posted in 2007. (Note: No official "Real Superbike" lap record has yet fallen to the current generation of machines, but Hayes has been increasingly knocking on the door.)
Hayes was almost four seconds better than his rivals halfway through the first practice and ended up more than two seconds ahead at its conclusion
The story in qualifying was little different. The double champ was back into the '11s while his closest challengers were stuck in the '13s.
This weekend is huge for AMA Superbike title hopeful Blake Young, who is closer in the points standings than his recent relative run of pace compared to Hayes might suggest. The Yoshimura Suzuki pilot is in need of a big weekend in front of his home crowd to demonstrate that he has an answer for his rival's surge.
In an attempt to quickly get up to speed, Young attempted to lock onto Hayes' rear wheel on Friday but the Mississippian would have none of it.
Hayes laughed and explained, "It's pretty funny -- we've been playing the game out there. Blake's been trying to follow quite a bit this morning and I’m just not going to let him do it. It's not my job to help him race better."
Meanwhile, Hayes' teammate, Josh Herrin, put in a late flier to leap up from tenth to second on his final lap, again pushing Young to third just as he did in the race at MMP just a few days ago. Don't think for a moment that Hayes' didn't take notice. "Josh is doing a great job stepping up on the other Yamaha; he was pretty far down the list and then all the sudden really pulled things together at the end."
Asked if his sizable advantage gave him the latitude to start gunning for the ghosts Mladin and Spies as opposed to his current competitors, Hayes insisted he is still firmly focused on doing his job of beating the men he shares the track with.
"It'd be nice -- it would be great," Hayes said of potentially establishing a new lap record this weekend. "It would show how far the current bikes in their current state of tune are developing. They are a far cry from the amount of modifications they had those bikes back then.
"But I'm not so much thinking about that; I'm thinking about riding clean and putting in good laps. If I can put fast consistent ones -- faster than the other guys and make them play catch-up -- that's my goal right now."
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