Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

AMA Repsol S uperst ock Se r ies With his Repsol Superstock win at Mazda Raceway, Tommy Hayden (22) cut deeply into the injured Jamie Hocking's series points lead, while teammate and brother Roger Lee Hoyden (95) ran second to make for a Kawasaki one·two. The Hoyden brothers go at it again ECI.a:J,., Repsol Superstoek Champi. onship may well be decided in the final race at Virginia Internat ional Raceway in mid-September. With three races to go, fIVe points separate the top two championship contenders, and there are only 10 points among the top three. Today's race , at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, was won by Kawasa ki's Tommy Hayden over his brother Roger Lee and Graves Motorsports Yamaha's Aaron Gobert. But the res ult was largely decided a week and a half ago at the Mid ·Oh io Sports Car Course. Two significant th ings occurred: Tommy Hayden found the comfort zone on his Kawasaki ZX-IORR that he 's been searching for all year. And points leader Jam ie Hacking crashed, breaking his right collarbone. It added up to Hayden closing the gap on Hacking to five points, 2]8·24] , following today's race, held just afte r noon on a warm Saturday afternoon in Monterey. Hacking was sixth and nearly much worse. In the first three comers he survived three calamities, any one of which co uld have e nded his season. So concerned was he that Sunday's Supersport race would be a replay that he pulled out, citing his own well being. "Not too bad , considering the drcumstances we were put in," Hacking said. "We got through this, and we go horne and heal and get back to win ning." Hayden started from the pole but wasn't away first. Instead he needed fIVe laps to put Graves Motorsports Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo behind him. DiSalvo had started hard but on the wrong rear tire and soon found himself slipping backward. "We chose the wrong rear tire for sure," DiSalvo said. He would end up fifth. Tommy was in front of Roger Lee by lap seven and soon to disappear. The test at Mid-Ohio hadgiven him his best big bike of 28 JULY 21, 2004 • CYCLE NEWS the season. The pace he wanted to run was in the mid-I :27s, and he was in the zone, 27.5s and 27.6s. "I seen we were pulling out," he said. "That was just my goal to get into the rhythm, and hopefully it was in the 27s and see who could hang on. Here Ifelt like I had the best bike, honestly. When I was riding beh ind other people, Ifelt like my bike performed a little bit better everywhere." Roger Lee tried to hang with his big brother but couldn't. There was a recurrence of earlier false neutral problems that he said were starting to "aggravate" him, and then there was Tommy 's riding. "Tommy rod e good," he said. "He was just a little bit better than me today." Exactly .9] 8 of a second better at the end of the 17-lap, ]7.4-mile race. Hayden broke his own two-year-old race average of 88.4 mph, setting a new mark of 91.0 12 mph, winning the race in 25 40th Anniversary minutes, 4.91 5 seconds. It was his second win, but he knows he needs consistency to make a run at Hacking. "We've shown from the beginning - we both podiumed in Daytona - that the bike's pretty good, but in the battle for the championship you can't be getting sixth on your off weekend, and that's what I've been doing , and that's not the combination for winn ing championships," Tommy Hayden said. "Now, hopefully, we definitely learned some stuff in O hio. It's not going to be that way every week. When it's not, hopefully we can get a second or a third , instead of sixth like it has been: ' Gobert moved by teammate DiSalvo for th ird on lap seven, then spent the rest of the race watching the leaders slip away. The final practice session had been redflagged early on , and Gobert wasn't able to work through his race settings, "and I just started the race on a bike I'd never ridden

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