Team Amsoil/Hero EBR's Geoff May (Photo: Evan Williams)

Everyone else needs to seriously up their games. The exits of Ben Spies and Mat Mladin from the championship was supposed to result in a general compression of the top ten and set the stage for a series in which six or seven riders could win on any given weekend.

Instead, it's starting to feel a bit like the old days again, only with considerably more exciting racing for the win. It's almost to the point where Hayes and Young have pretty much everyone beat before they even get to the racetrack. Their reputations are on the rise while the others are falling further and further behind -- at about a clip of a second per lap.

However, Geoff May and the Team Amsoil/Hero EBR squad deserve their props. It's still a relatively new team/manufacturer/bike, and with May at the controls, it looked pure class at Road Atlanta. Only a Sunday mechanical mishap could prevent May from taking a pair of top fives.

It'll be interesting to see how May (and teammate Danny Eslick) fare as the season progresses. May is a certified Road Atlanta genius, living only a few miles from the track and having an Atlanta Superstock race victory and a pair of Atlanta Superbike podiums to his credit.

And in a sign of how much has changed in AMA Superbike racing over the past several years, consider that the EBR 1090RS was the second most populous machine on the track at Road Atlanta. While GSX-Rs continued to dominate the field, there were three EBRs that qualified for the Road Atlanta Superbike races compared to two Yamahas, two BMWs, one KTM, one Kawasaki, and zero Hondas or Ducatis.

Next up is Infineon Raceway, which should provide an interesting comparison to last season. Young was well off the lead pace in Sonoma a year ago. He qualified on the second row and finished fourth and third (about 20 seconds or so off the win each time out) in what was his weakest overall weekend of the year. Meanwhile, Hayes took a win and a runner-up and now boasts four Superbike wins in his last six attempts at Infineon Raceway.

Just how much has Young developed since then? Hayes said he fully expects his rival to be dicing with him for wins this time around. We'll see… and we'll also take note of how those wins are decided.

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.