Cycle News

VOL. 50 ISSUE 39 OCTOBER 1, 2013 how in the hell is he going to win one in AMA Superbike? Turns out we owe both Graves and Herrin an apology. Herrin won the 2013 AMA Superbike Championship on a sunny September morning at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and he did so by being… well, smart. And consistent. In fact, the race itself was basically a mirror image of his season. He did what he needed to do to accomplish the goal. He finished second. During his championship run, Herrin took full advantage of every miscue from his teammate Josh Hayes, the three-time defending AMA Superbike Champion who was knocked on his backside from the get-go after his two non-finishes at Daytona. But Hayes was still going to figure out a way to win this thing. After all, Hayes was more experienced, Hayes was faster, and Hayes was always going to win more races and earn more pole positions. Almost to a fault, Herrin acknowledges all of that. But the 2013 AMA Superbike Champion is Josh Herrin. And that will be in the history books for… well, forever. "I think it's in the back of anybody's mind that they want it to happen," Herrin said when asked if winning a Superbike title was on his mind when he was 16 years old and making his AMA debut. "I expected a championship on the 600 for sure, but that never happened. Luckily, even though that didn't happen, Yamaha gave us the opportunity to ride the Superbike. But to answer the question, no – winning a Superbike title never crossed my mind. P77 Briefly... Josh Hayes earned his eighth AMA Superbike pole position of the year, ending the season a perfect eightfor-eight in qualifying on the year. Hayes' best lap came in Friday's provisional qualifying session and he wasn't able to match the time on Saturday. But no one else did either. "It was a good session," Hayes said on Saturday after failing to improve upon his 1:24.249 from Friday. "The track was a lot like yesterday and I felt like it was a really good lap time considering I really struggled finding a few apexes. I struggled a little bit on the front today, getting stopped in a couple of areas. The tire had good grip and I did all my work on the exits and was able to get some good drives. Fortunately, I had a lot of clean laps on the racetrack. I didn't have much traffic to deal with and was able to do some good laps. I'm pretty happy with how it went and I'm excited to go racing." With the series now featuring a spectire rule, you don't hear much about the black round things, but that changed a bit at Laguna Seca when Dunlop removed what most of the riders considered to be the best tire option after Friday's qualifying session. The tire, which is made in Buffalo, New York, using a different manufacturing process where the rubber is strip wound, wasn't removed for safety reasons, according to Dunlop vice president Mike Buckley, but for "performance drop-off issues." The new tire was first used at Mid-Ohio in July, but Dunlop saw some issues with it there and pulled it from the rider allotment. "We worked on it again and thought we were on top of it," Buckley said. "But Josh [Hayes] had an issue with it after the first session continued on next page

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