Extends time gap to 0.903 seconds over Roger Hayden, with Ben Bostrom and Geoff May completing front row
SONOMA, CA, MAY 5 – Monster Energy Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes ended Suzuki’s years long winning streak when he took his first Superbike victory at Infineon Raceway in 2009. That he took his breakthrough win wasn’t a surprise—he was getting closer race by race—the surprise was that he won by 6.135 seconds. Hayes didn’t expect to win by that big a margin and didn’t win the next day, but he’s had great success at Infineon, winning four of the past six Superbike races. And if his qualifying effort Saturday is any indication, he’ll add at least one if not two more AMA wins to that tally this weekend.
Hayes qualified on the pole with a time of 1:35.872. The reigning Superbike champion was the only rider in the 35s during qualifying at Infineon and it showed; second fastest Roger Hayden (National Guard Jordan Suzuki) was 0.903 seconds slower. Multiply that times 22 laps and Hayes could be in for one of the biggest wins of his career.
Certainly it won’t go like that, but there’s no indication that he’ll be challenged. The rest of the front row, third fastest Ben Bostrom (Jordan Suzuki) and fourth fastest Geoff May (Team Amsoil Hero EBR), won’t be able to keep up. The only rider who might is Yoshimura Suzuki’s Blake Young and he had an awful qualifying session. Young crashed in turn seven late in qualifying, then returned to the pits, unable to improve on his Friday time. He’d qualify seventh fastest. Young and his team know the track well, so he can be expected to be in the mix from the start, but the crash would have done nothing for his confidence.
“It was a pretty eventful session for me,†Hayes said. “I did a start yesterday at the end of qualifying and not doing a lap around the track afterwards to cool it down, I’m not sure if the heat soak is what did it, but I went out and first lap or so wasn’t too bad and then I got some clear track and kinda started picking up the pace and the clutch was just completely fried, so it was spinning the whole time. So I came in and we had to swap everything over to the other bike. The other bike wasn’t matched to the one I’d been riding. It kinda had a different shock and a bunch of settings that we showed up with and had kinda developed away from. But surprisingly. you go back and try something again and it was like, ‘oh wow, it does a couple of things really well and a couple of things that we can improve.’ So now we’re going to go back and sit down and look at all the pieces and see what we want to do for the race and see if we can improve the bike a little bit and see how the wind picks up and just try to have a good day.â€
Photo Gallery: AMA Pro Infineon Superbike Saturday final qualifying—Hayes goes even quicker for pole - Sport Rider Magazine
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