Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 37 SEPTEMBER 17, 2013 and go by. I don't know if it was as close… it was closer than I wanted to be to him being in the championship, let's put it that way. It was good. I did consistent 21s for the first eight or nine laps and then I don't know, I had a little bit of an issue there in the middle. I'm not sure what was going on. Those guys got away from me and I kind of cruise around the second half of the race by myself. All in all with my crew it was our best weekend so far. We made improvements by leaps and bounds. Hopefully we can carry that to Laguna and go win one of this dang things." 11 CHRIS FILLMORE 5TH/6TH 99 GEOFF MAY 9TH/7TH KTM/HMC Racing's Chris Fillmore turned a lot of heads on Saturday when he ran third in the early going before crashing out. "I lost the front. It was the left hander and maybe the tires weren't quite up to temp yet," he explained. "I was definitely pushing just because I was up there and I wanted to give it my all." Fillmore got the bike going again and then the red flag gave his crew a chance to repair the bike and Fillmore raced to a strong fifth, matching his best result of the season. On Sunday he had another good run to sixth, tying him with Larry Pegram for sixth in the standings. "Today [Sunday] I was kind of consistent. I noticed a lot of people were fading and I pretty much stayed within a half second of my fastest lap. It ended up pretty good – a sixth-place finish and I started catching Eslick at the end there, I just needed a few more laps. We had a front tire spin on the rim. It was like a jackhammer all over the place. It must take it out of balance because it literally felt like something was going wrong and my teeth were chattering out. I could still do the lap times, it was just a couple of corners, like the fast one coming onto the front straight was a little hairball." Geoff May ran strong on the factory EBR in the early laps, but suffered tire problems in the second half of both races. He leaves New Jersey ranked eighth, but is still in a tight battle with Larry Pegram and Chris Fillmore over sixth in the standings. "I had a good race in the beginning," May said. "I knew I had to get a good start today [Sunday] and really focused on that. I tried to stay with that lead pack. I had a really good pace in the first half, but we're having some tire durability issues. I just tore the [rear] tire up and had nothing left the last eight laps. I had to just soldier on with what I had. We just need to clean that up for the back half of the race and we should be able to get some better results." bummed out. My bonus check is going to be a little bigger now." Hayes put Saturday's race behind him the best he could and did what he does. The race kicked off with Cardenas taking the early lead with a strong start into the first turn. He was followed by the Yamaha's of Herrin and Hayes. Hayes got by his teammate halfway through the first lap. At the start of the second lap Hayes took over the lead going into turn one and Herrin followed. Cardenas was shuffled back to third. That was the last anyone saw of Hayes. He checked out. Sunday's win was little consolation for Hayes who now has no control over his own destiny in the championship. It was noted that he never cracked a smile on the podium. Hayes commented on how he felt. "I'm proud of the way I rode," P73 Briefly... amazing save here: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=nSXjZQFvIw Both Yamaha Superbike riders Josh Hayes and Josh Herrin experienced some type of electronics issues with their bikes at the start of Saturday's Superbike race. Herrin speculated that it had something to do with the launch control and he didn't use that feature on the restart Saturday. The issue could have drastically changed the complexion of the championship, but both Hayes and Herrin were able to shut off and restart their machines, resetting the bike's computer and allowing them to run normally. It was a frantic moment, especially for Herrin. "It was like the pit limiter was on or something down the straightaway," Herrin explained. "Everybody just started weaving around me and I was hoping no one would run into me. I saw Josh [Hayes] go back at the same time, so I was kind of panicking. I had to wait for everybody to go by and stop on the side of the track and shut the bike off completely and turn it back on. I think when I came around we had like 20 seconds that we lost or something. When I tried to turn the bike off I couldn't even remember which button to push I was so frustrated with what was going on. He [Hayes] went by me, I thought he must have got it fixed – I couldn't get mine fixed. You know how when you drive bumper cars they can shut off your car from far away? They shut our bikes off, you know, that's what it felt like. If something happens you just shut the bike off, just like a computer, and restart it."

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