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CN III ARCHIVES P98 BY LARRY LAWRENCE HERRIN'S PLACE IN HISTORY J osh Herrin: 2013 AMA Superbike Champion. It still seems a little strange writing that, because while Herrin undoubtedly improved a great deal as a rider this season, almost everyone thought his Yamaha teammate Josh Hayes would rally to win his fourth-straight title. There's still almost a collective shock that Hayes had so many crazy things go wrong this season that kept him from what felt like his rightful place atop the standings at the end of the season, but racing is nothing if not unpredictable. So while Hayes won eight races to Herrin's four, the veteran three-time champ experienced a nightmarish opening to the season at Daytona where he suffered two DNFs due to mechanicals in the opening week of the season. That put him so far behind the eight ball that he needed to be perfect the rest of the year and he wasn't. A crash in Utah pretty much sealed his fate. So Herrin is the champ. Veteran journalists who've covered AMA Superbike racing for years, immediately came up with at least two other times in AMA Superbike history when a rider who was not the best in the series won the championship. The 1998 season came quickly to mind. That year Ben Bostrom was a model of consistency, finishing in the top-five nearly every weekend, including five podiums, but Bostrom didn't win a single race en route to winning that year's championship. Bostrom, riding a Vance & Hines Ducati, was the last man standing in '98. Honda's Miguel Duhamel looked destined to be the champ, having won four of the first six rounds, but he hit a wall at Loudon, shattering his leg and his season. Yamaha's Anthony Gobert was arguably the most talented rider in the championship that year, but that was the sea- son he got tossed for failing a drug test. Mat Mladin and Suzuki were on the rise, but still a year away from beginning a long-run of dominance. Mladin's teammate Aaron Yates was spectacular at times, but not consistently so. Doug Chandler was coming off two-consecutive title runs with Muzzy Kawasaki, but suffered a bad crash in the World Superbike race at Laguna Seca fracturing his ankle. He still finished a very close second to Bostrom in the final standings. To be fair Ben Bostrom came back with probably an even stronger 1999 campaign, winning his first AMA Superbike race along the way, but that season he came up just short of the surging Mladin and the updated Yoshimura Suzuki.