Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Round 3 AMA SUPERBIKE i~ Pro Honda Oils Supersport Ben Spies ran away and hid in the Supersport final It was Hayden's th ird pod ium in a row - he had a third and second in the first two rounds - which kept him atop the cham pionship standings. After three of II rounds, he leads Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo , fourth today, 9S-89. Hacking is tied with Roger Lee Hayden , sixth today, at 86. There were a number of limiting factors for Spies. First was the unusu ally hot weather; mid-80s w ith no breeze , which tormented the DOT tires. Then the re were the lappers, hard to pass on the 2.32-mile road course. Managing both became Spies' work. ------....., STORY AND PHOTOS BY HENNY RAy ABRAMS o much for the notion of cut and thrust Supersport racing. Ben Spies made a mockery of it, jetting to the lead with a white- hot first lap that gave him a cushion he'd never relinquish. Adding nearly a second a lap in the early going, the talented Texan was able to control the pace to the end and give Yoshimura Suzuki their first Pro Honda Oi ls Supersport win of the year. "I don't know what was going on with the bike and me, but everything just clicked," the youngest member of the Yosh team said. The lead grew to over four seconds, then shrank in the later stages when the victory was secure. "We just kind of mellowed out towards the end of the race," Spies said. MAY 12, 2004 • "The tire started getting greasy when we started getting into the lappers." Lappers wouldn't decide the race. Spies made sure of that . "Unless I got in a serious deal with a lapper, they weren't going to run me down," he said. Yamaha's Jamie Hacking was in second - his spot as secure as Spies' for much of the race - and wanting to inch closer. "I was wondering why Jamie [Hacking) was pushing so hard ," Spies said . "I thought he was by himself. I was hoping he was going to ease up." With the race drawing to a close, Spies looked back and saw Kawasaki's Tommy Hayden pushing Hacking, wh ich meant the pair was pushing to the front. "Then just they were going to push me all the way to the end , and I just held it for the win," Spies said. The margin of victory was 1.324 seconds after 17 laps. Hacking was second, with Tommy Hayden 1.6 seconds back. CYCLE NEWS 40th Anniversary There was no sense in kee ping the lead at four seconds and riding as hard as he had to ride to do it. ''And I was sta rting to get into lappers, and the tires were getting greasy," he said. "Jamie and Tommy were riding a good race , but you get that big of a gap and with all of us going arou nd at the same speed, you can kind of back off a little bit. I just kind of backed it down. The lappers weren't looking at the blue nags. They just kept racing. They'd look back , see you and keep going. I wanted to steer clear of everybody and kee p it under me ." Hacking said his race was lost in the first tw o laps. O nce Spies pulled away, there was no catching him. Most of the race he was alone. It was only to wa rd the en d that Tom my Hayden made his push. "He was comi ng, and I had to keep going and kee p going," Hacking said. "Man, I was having to take so me pre tty deep breaths. Get some air in the lungs." Hacking said his push at the end wasn't to catch Spies, but to fend off Hayden. And tra ffic didn't he lp. "Ran into lappe rs and they're throwing the blue nags this weekend," he said. "I don't know why they 're th rowing them. They might as well put Yamaha and a turn ing fork on it because the lappers are not paying any attention to them ." Like Hack ing, Hayden was beh ind from the start and unable to catch up. "I got a decent jump, and I kind of got pinched off in one , and then I got all excited and had a slide out of two and lost two more spots. I was buried pretty deep," he said of ending the first lap in seventh. "I knew from the re I was going to have to start picking people off. I knew it'd be tough to get back. From second lap on my goal was to try to get back to the podium ." Progress was increme ntal. Sixth on lap tw o , fifth on lap five, then fourth a lap

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