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ROUNDS 12-13/SEPTEMBER 14-15, 2013 NEW JERSEY MOTOSPORTS PARK/MILLVILLE, NEW JERSEY AMA SUPERBIKE P70 AMA NATIONAL GUARD SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP Josh Herrin won Saturday's race and by the end of the weekend virtually had a wrap on the 2013 Superbike title. going to be caught. Had that race run clean to completion, Cardenas may very well have been the series leader going into Sunday's race. But then a big break came for Herrin. The Neyra Kawasaki of Huntley Nash sprang an oil leak and the red flag stopped the race. On the restart it was Herrin taking the early lead. Every series has its twists and turns, but we may look back after this season is over and realize that particular red flag ultimately may turn out to be one of the pivotal turning points of the series. THE JUMP HEARD AROUND THE WORLD Josh Hayes owns New Jersey Motorsports Park. Not literally, but when you've won seven of the eight AMA Superbike races held at the track since it first hosted the series in 2009, it's fair to say most had expectations of a sweep of everything for Hayes this year. Had that happened the series would have been a tossup at Laguna Seca. But a jump-start by Hayes in Saturday's race changed everything. Instead of racing for the win, a fivesecond jump-start penalty meant that instead of cruising to a win, Hayes had to ride his Yamaha's wheels off just to get fourth. It was a terrible turn of events, obvi- ously for Hayes, but for the championship finale at Laguna Seca as well. Instead of fans watching two, possibly three riders going at it in Monterey for a winner-take-all season finale, they'll be watching to see if Josh Herrin can keep it inside the top 10. Not quite the tension builder one might have hoped for. Hayes claimed he didn't jump the start, even though he has a history of doing so. Incidentally, Danny Eslick and Huntley Nash were also cited for jumping the original start, as was Larry Pegram, who made a particularly egregious jump on the red-flag restart. "I've jumped the start a bunch of times and I'll be the first to admit it when I screwed up," Hayes said. "But I didn't jump the start. The way it was explained to me it was a non-protest- Lucky break number two was Herrin also barely avoided a crash at one point when he gave the bike way too much gas. "That was as close as I ever came to highsiding on the R1," he admitted. Herrin's last-turn pass on Cardenas caused contact and forced the Yoshimura Suzuki rider wide enough that he went up on the rumble strip and lost his drive, allowing Roger Lee Hayden to get by him as well. The Colombian went from first to third in the span of a couple hundred feet of racetrack. "I just got a really good drive coming out of the carousel, or whatever it's called, the long left," Herrin said. "When we went through the able thing. It was Dave McGrath's call, and his call is his call. That's my understanding. "I know I wasn't the first one to launch. I thought I was the last one to launch on my row. If anything I was late on the light. The bike was really tall and I was fighting to hold it in position, but I did not jump the start." Hayes' starting technique involves holding the throttle wide open, holding in the clutch and trying to prevent creep by holding the bike steady with his feet. AMA Pro Racing was confident enough of the call that they showed Yamaha racing manager Keith McCarty the video. A new starting procedure rule was put into place before Laguna Seca in July that called for no forward movement being allowed before starting lights extinguish. According to AMA

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