Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Team Kawasaki's Tommy Hayden Yates. More revealing is that four times last year he was leading a Supersport race on the final lap, only to be passed. Tommy worked on his aggression by racing his undersized 600 in the 750cc Superstock class. "I feel like I made a good step in being more aggressive last year, and I definitely feel like there were a few situations last year where I could have been more aggressive on the last lap or possibly could have won," he said. "I don't know. Maybe I couldn't have. I won two races last year, but I led like four or five other races on the last lap and didn't win. So definitely there were a few times I felt like I could have been a little more aggressive or should have tried to be. I don't want to go away and take too big a step and start tossing away every race going for the win. Sometimes you have to take second. I've just got to find that fine line when it's okay to hang it out that last little bit and when it's not." Riders, good riders, crash. It's a way - not always the best way - of finding the absolute limit. Tommy Hayden has seen the best riders crash. He has to look no further than his family. Nicky suffered a horrific highside somersault in the chicane during practice for last year's Daytona 200, lucky the RC51 missed him as he slid toward the air fence. Amazingly, he was unhurt and came back to win the race. Nicky also crashed in the season finale at Virginia International Raceway, but not before sewing up the AMA/Chevy Trucks U.S. Superbike title over Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom, who'd had a slow-motion mechanical failure-inducing tip-over the day Nicky clinched. One of the first times Nicky rode the Honda RC-211V MotoGP machine, at Valencia, Spain, he tucked the front end and crashed. Applying what he learned from that, he hasn't crashed since. The flip side is riders like Carlos Checa and Ruben Xaus who seem to crash without necessarily gaining any insight. Tommy, 24, remembers the last time he highsided. It was Daytona in 1997, the second time he raced the Muzzy Kawasaki Superbike as an 18year-old. Rob Muzzy signed Tommy to partner another dirt tracker with an effortlessly smooth riding style, Doug Chandler. Muzzy said one of the reasons he tabbed Tommy was that he'd qualified for a mile dirt track as a teen-ager, and to an old dirt track hand like Muzzy, that meant something. Tommy admits he was in over his head during the Muzzy years. Prior to signing with Muzzy, his resume included four or five races on a 600, some WERA races and one AMA race. From that he went to one of the more successful Superbike efforts in the AMA paddock where he was asked to learn and race two new motorcycles. At the time, Tommy knew very little about the science of racing, strategy, setup or tires. "All I knew was new and used," he jokes. Knowing what he knows now, he realizes how big a jump it was. "I would have sure jumped on the opportunity in a heartbeat again," he says. "So would anyone else. That's the break that any young kid coming along wants. It was a great opportunity. It was a great thing for my career, but it was tough, because no matter who you are or where you come from or how much experience you have, whenever you come on a full factory team, you're expected to put out results pretty fast, no matter what they say. You hear all them say 'It's a learning year, and that's okay,' and all that. But down deep, it's okay for a little while, but you've definitely got to start producing pretty fast. It was a steep learning curve for me." Doug Chandler was a rider whom Tommy always 40 FEBRUARY 26, 2003' cue • e n e looked up to, even back in his dirt track days. Their approaches and demeanors are similar. Both are smooth on the track, quiet away from the track, and totally committed to racing. They are strong family men from strong families. (Tommy stayed with the Chandlers in Salinas during the Laguna Seca test.) Since Tommy's first days in the AMA paddock, the two have been close, whether as teammates or rivals. "Any time I have questions, even now, he's the first person I go talk to," Tommy says. "I have a lot of respect for his ideas and opinions. That was a huge help to me. First coming in, I always looked up to him. I was scared to ask him anything. Once I got to know him a little bit and realized how helpful he could be, he helped me with a lot of things that would have taken a lot longer to learn without him. He went out of his way to help me. A lot of things ... he was battling for championships back then. He probably could have used that time for other stuff, but he always took out the time to help me." From Kawasaki Tommy went to Yamaha for three years, first on the 600, followed by two frustrating years on the Superbike. "The Superbike - I felt pretty comfortable on it, and the bike was pretty fun to ride, and it seemed to handle pretty well, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't seem to get the lap times out of it," he says. Regardless of what he or the team did, the results never came. The Yamaha YZFR7, wasn't much different from his Kawasaki ZX-7R, and it was good enough to win races under teammate Anthony Gobert. "I actually liked it better than the Kawasaki at the time, just because it fit me a little bit better; it was a little bit smaller, compact feeling. I just never could get that last little bit out of me or the bike." Tommy came back to Kawasaki in 2002, now to race Supersport and Superstock. Tommy's 2002 season began badly with the crash at Daytona. The force of the crash tossed both him and his ZX-6R down the banking, his gas tank spewing fire as it went. Physically he was unhurt, but he took a hit in the points standing he couldn't make up. The 2003 600 wars will be even more difficult. There could be more than 20 factory-backed bikes on the grid at some of the 600 races. "This year, I 'ftI' s think, it's the deepest it's ever been as far as talent and top-notch equipment," Tommy says. Yamaha, Honda, and Kawasaki all have new 600s, with Suzuki and Yates eager to retain the number-one plate. "But still, it's not going to be any tougher, I don't think, to win, only because there's always been two, three guys who are exceptionally fast. Then there's always been a strong field of top 10." Tommy, like all racers, has to feel he's the favorite. "I have to feel that personally going in, or if you don't have that going in, it's just going to be an uphill battle for sure. But I know that it's not going to be easy. I know that I have to get the best out of myself to be there." The Supersport title is the focus of this season. Confidence in his abilities and the prospect of a sunlit future convinced him to sign a one-year deal. "For sure, I think if I win the Championship this year, surely I think that will open up a lot of doors," he says. "And that's my goal right now. And that's why I just wanted to do a one-year deal, and my goal's definitely to get back on Superbike. "Still, ultimately, I'd like to go GP racing, but I also know that until I accomplish some goals that are right here in front of me, like winning the 600 Championship and some things like that, there's no need even thinking about that other stuff, because those opportunities are never going to come." Tommy at first says he's not in a big hurry to ride a Superbike but realizes that isn't the case. In the middle of the 2004 season, he'll turn 25, still plenty young to make the move, but also fighting the youthful wave of Italian and Spanish teenagers, riders whose ability to attract sponsorship is an asset Tommy can't match. "For sure, I can't wait around forever," he says. "There's definitely some urgency. Next year I want to get back on Superbike for sure. That's my plan. To get where I want to be, I feel like I need to win the 600 Championship this year." When he was with Yamaha, there were opportunities to fill in for injured riders in the World Supersport series, but he thought better of it. For now, his only focus is MotoGP, not World Superbike, and getting back together with his brother, Nicky.

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