Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 29 JULY 23, 2013 P81 Briefly... good way to start the weekend. It looked like we had a nice gap to the third-placed person so it looks like things are coming around pretty good so far this weekend. I told my guys yesterday if I didn't lead the first session I was going to be really mad. I was going to be upset. As soon as they let us go, I just started pushing as hard as I could." applied the brakes, Hayes shot past on the outside, squared off turn two nicely and exited with the lead. Game over. After slowing in the final laps, Hayes crossed the finish line with almost eight seconds to spare as the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha MotoGP team cheered him on from pit wall. "It's just cool," said Hayes, who rode for the Tech 3 team at Valencia two years ago in the season-ending Grand Prix. "I know they're done and they're ready to go home and pack it in and they watched the race. So I'm just excited that they watched the race. I had a really good time when I went and rode for those guys and I'm glad that we have the friendship that we have." As for the race itself… "That race felt like 50 laps to me," Hayes said. "It actually felt like an Danny Eslick (23) finished fourth after getting the better of Larry Pegram (72) and Taylor Knapp (44). Pegram suffered with arm pump and faded to eighth; and Knapp crashed out of the battle with Eslick. extremely long race. At halfway I looked up and saw 16 to go and I thought, 'You've got to be kidding me.' It was smooth at least." Smooth it was. Hayes wasted little time in getting to work once he'd gotten past Herrin in turn two on the opening lap. "For me it was just about putting my head down," Hayes said. "One of my first laps was a mid-24 and I came around and still had a '0' on the board. So I thought, 'Here we go, it's going to be a long day.' Fortunately, I could see Josh's [Herrin] board right next to mine and I saw that he was 'P2' with a 'Plus 0' also. The next lap I had a one second gap. The first couple of laps came pretty easy Aaron Yates said he's having fun back in the AMA paddock, though he still aches for a shot to run closer to the pointy end of the field. "I'm having fun, but after the race is over it's kind of a bummer being so far back," Yates said. "I want to be up at the front and racing for a win. I feel like I'm riding really good. I know I'm riding the wheels off this motorcycle. That's what I've got to work with, but it's awesome being a factory rider on the EBR team. It's the American Superbike team and I knew it was going to be a developmental kind of thing, but I believe there's a bright future ahead for the team and hopefully I'll be involved in it. I'm enjoying it." at 24.5 [1:24.5 lap times] and I didn't make any mistakes. The gap started to grow and then in the middle I got complacent… I wanted to see if I could do it again so I got back into the 24s and put it on cruise from there." Behind him things were a bit more hectic. Initially it was Herrin leading Hayden, the latter anxious to get past the Yamaha R1 so he could work on trying to track down Hayes. But it took longer than planned. Hayden was be-

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