Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Nicky Hayden By HENNY RAY ABRAMS ary Nixon is mumbling along at 100 mph, an endless stream of wisdom laced with profanity and pronounced by the seasoned voice of a former National Champion with a veteran's love of raCing. "He's the best I've ever seen," Nixon said during the recent Dunlop tire tests at Daytona, and, over the course of his more than 40-year involvement in racing, Nixon has seen them all - only a handful of superbike races, led on the penultimate lap, only to get passed by the more experienced Chandler and the resurgent Pascal Picotte. At the end of the day, he'd earned his first Superbike podium and served notice that he'd be a force in 2000, as if anyone thought differently. Nicky Hayden is one of the young lions leading the charge to challenge the established order in road racing, a fresh infusion of talent and personality. There's the bleached, occasionally leopard-spotted hair and the baggy pants accessorized with the requisite jewelry and flash watch. Fans, both young and old, male ty good races. Actually, I enjoy racing with him because I've ridden with him'so much and raced him pretty much my whole life, so I always kind of know what he's going to do and I pretty well trust him. "At home, he's always hac the big-brother advantage. Mentally, he's always been able to beat me. I think that's one of the things that's helped me more than anything - at home, growing up, I've always had to chase to him, always had someone, instead of just being out riding around by myself - because he's always been faster than me or I was on his older bike or something, so he'd have a little better bike and I'd ••• from Resweber to Rayborn to Roberts, Springsteen to Spencer to Shobert. "He wins road races, he wins dirt tracks. I've seen him pass Scott Parker on the outside, [Chris) Carr on the outside, Will Davis on the outside. And he comes from a good family. Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. I don't think I've ever heard him swear." Nicky Hayden is the rider Nixon praises, the 18year-old middle Hayden brother and bleached-blond Gen-X poster boy - the one who won the 600cc Supersport title this year, took five wins along the way, and took another seven wins on his way to a runner-up finish in the Formula Xtreme championship; the rider Honda has seen as the future of road racing; the part-time dirt tracker who also took his first National dirt track win this past year in Nixon's back yard, Hagerstown, Maryland; and the AMA Pro Athlete of the Year in a year which Jeremy McGrath, Chris Carr and Mat Mladin excelled. "Winning Hagerstown this year is pretty much one of the highlights of my career," Hayden said over the course of a wide-ranging interview in the Honda transporter during the December Dunlop Daytona tire tests. But his most impressive ride might have been his second-place finish at the season-ending Del Mar mile. "Man, I came so close to winning that," he remembers. "That would have been a really good way to end the season. The middle of the race, I was struggling, running sixth or seventh, then I just started picking up the pace and the last 10 laps 1 was going for it and I caught up to [Scott] Parker, and the last lap, going into three, 'I tried to go around him and slipped off the groove and ended up second. That was my best finish on the mile. At the time, I thought it might be my last dirt track ever, so I wanted to win really bad." To put his career into perspective, the only other current riders to win both dirt tracks and road races are Doug Chandler, whose last dirt track win came at Ascot in 1989, and Larry Pegram, who took his first Superbike win this past year at Willow Springs, and won the Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania Half Mile in 1994. Hayden, it must be pointed out, hasn't won an AMA Superbike race. Yet. At the season finale at Pikes Peak, Hayden, who raced the Honda RC45 at JANUARY 12, 2000' eye I • and female, are invariably drawn to him, and he's endlessly polite and engaging. Though he admits to not being the world's best high school senior - he missed 40 days as a junior - his public speaking-skills have improved dramatically over the past few years, and he never lacks for an answer. In fact, it's just the opposite. At Laguna Seca last year, he suffered through a tedious and mostly ignorant interview with a cub reporter that would have sent some of his fellow riders into fits of apoplexy. Even when he rode for Team HyperCycie Suzuki and was getting disqualified because of his team's owner's transgressions on an all too regular basis, Hayden always faced the music. As far as hobbies are concerned, he says he enjoys working out and riding motocross and "just hanging out with my friends, chasing girls. Is that a hobby? I don't know." At the Catholic school he attends, he admits, "I wouldn't say I'm exactly an honor student." But he should graduate this spring. What he does best is race motorcycles, and the reason is simple: It's what he's always wanted to do. "That's all I pretty much did my whole life - racing motorcycles, watching motorcycles," Hayden says of his upbringing on the Hayden family farm in Owensboro, Kentucky. "Every night I'd go to bed pretty much thinking about them and wake up thinking about them. That's been my life, pretty much." Racing is the Hayden family business. Older brother Tommy is a factory Yamaha rider and younger brother Roger Lee has signed on with Chaparral Suzuki for the 2000 season. Hayden's parents are a fixture at every race, usually with his sister, and usually watching two of their sons battling each other, and sometimes all three. "Growing up in my house has always been pretty cool, because there's always been something to do," Hayden says. "We always go riding, and there's always someone to ride with. Where I live, it's a cool house, a cool environment. I always felt there was never a dull moment." He's been riding almost his entire life and racing nearly that long, at first against his older brother before joining more organized competitions. Tommy was the one he looked up to, the one who first went dirt tracking on a national level and the first in the family to get a factory contract when he signed a twoyear deal with Muzzy Kawasaki in 1997. The rivalry continues to be intense, with Nicky just nipping Tommy in this year's 600cc Supersport Championship. "I mean, I enjoy racing against my brother," Nicky says. "I think that we bring out the best in each other. Seems like when we race, we always have some pret- ne""s always have to ride really hard just to stay with him, so I think it really helped me a lot." The 600cc Supersport Championship became their own war after a number of the title contenders, including their own teammates, eliminated each other. What helped Nicky was an unfortunate accident Tommy had during a motocross training session prior to Mid-Ohio. "We were out at this local motocross track and it was on a Wednesday night and we were riding and I was back at the truck, getting gas or something," Nicky explains. "I see this guy, some stranger, some Joe I'd never seen before in my life, he was pushing my brother's bike back. I was like, 'What's this cat doing?' And then I see my brother - he was standing up there holding his wrist. At first he didn't know it was broke. I kind of felt bad for him." Tommy took the pole position for the 600cc race at the final race in Pikes Peak, but Nicky had the numbers on his side and took his first AMA road racing title in only his second full professional season. It was only a year earlier that he felt he belonged in the company of the riders he dominated. As soon as he turned 16, on July 30, 1997, Hayden turned Pro, just in time to enter the final three road races of 1997. The first two were promising, but not spectacular. At the season finale in Las Vegas, Hayden qualified third on the 750 and was running third when he crashed. In the 600cc race, he was in the top 10, at the tail end of the lead group. "I remember at one point I was trying to pass , Miguel [DuHamel] and [Steve] Crevier and, at the time, I was just on a Kawasaki with some leathers off the shelf and my bike was okay, but it wasn't a factory bike, and that's when I was just pitted out the back of our van. At that point, I didn't know, but I felt like I could do it. I always felt in my career that I could, but until I actually proved it, I didn't know." In 1998 he won five 750cc Supersport races and took his first 600cc Supersport win at Willow Springs, but he got as m~ch notice for the penalties his team incurred for cheating. Everyone knew it wasn't the kid's fault, and Honda was sufficiently impressed to sign him to a two-year contract for 1999 and 2000. In 1999 he won every Formula Xtreme race that he finished, seven in all, but the bike let him down three times and that cost him the title. He was dominant in the 600cc Supersport class, needing only an eighthplace finish to take the title when the series rolled to its final stop at Pikes Peak International Raceway. He rode to a cautious fifth. Of the two, the 600 suited his style better, a byproduct of his years of dirt tracking. "I think, coming from dirt track, I'm pretty comfortable sliding the bike," Hayden says. "I don't really mind sliding. I feel comfortable when the bike's moving around under me. I don't really mind the bike a little bit loose. I think a lot of that comes from dirt

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