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INTERVIEW P128 AMA DAYTONA SPORTBIKE CHAMPION CAMERON BEAUBIER One of Beaubier's favorite Championship gifts – A signed helmet congratulating him from one of his racing heroes, Wayne Rainey. frustrating, battling with guys that were making good money. "But honestly in the SportBike class you could only go so far with the bike and so that was a good situation for us to be in because we could have a good competitive bike. "Obviously, it's not as good as the Graves bike, but it was good. So that was good for us. And I think that it was really good for me even though it kind of sucked… and no disrespect to [Josh] Herrin or Garrett [Gerloff] for getting put right on that team super young, but I think that it was good for me - riding a little bit of an under-powered bike the year before going on to that team on the best bike. I think that was good for me and it made me step up quick." And while hindsight is always 20/20, a lot of people at the beginning of 2010 felt that the wiser move was for Beaubier to stay in Supersport one more year, especially when his only options were a privateer effort. "Well, yeah, I know that a lot of people wanted me to ride in Supersport just because I had a rough year," he said. "It was kind of frustrating, but I knew that a couple of races my times were easily in the top 10 in SportBike when I was racing Supersport. And I was just kind of growing up. I was 17… your head isn't right and stuff like that. I turned 18 and I was like, 'Okay, I need to make this work or go get a job.' "My dad was spending a lot of money taking me racing even though we had support and stuff. It was tough. So, I'm really glad that it all worked out that's for sure." Beaubier accomplished his goal of winning the Daytona SportBike Championship on the 600 before moving up to Superbikes. So now what are his goals for his rookie Superbike season? "I honestly don't really know," Beaubier said. "I think after we start testing in January and kind of see where I am… Obviously, I want to go out and win but it's not that easy. I'm going to be racing against Martin [Cardenas] that I had a bunch of crazy battles with in 2012. He's super smart and super fast. He's on a Yosh [Yoshimura Suzuki] bike, which is really good. [Josh] Hayes, obviously he's the fastest guy on the track all the time. Roger Hayden [if he finds a ride]…" Despite the challenge, Beaubier feels good about it and he knows he's fortunate to have the experience of his teammate Josh Hayes to learn from. "It's going to be good," he said. "Even though Josh [Hayes]… who knows if he'll help me at all or not, but I think it'll be good to be teammates with him and kind of see what he does and does with the bike. "It's an interesting situation because on 600s I was in a different class and I kind of looked up to Josh 'cause he's like the guy to beat every weekend. He always does the fastest times, sometimes a second faster than everyone in qualifying, in practice, which I was trying to do on the 600s in the SportBike class. And I thought that was really cool. But now it's a different situation because I'm his teammate. I'm going to obviously want to beat him. So it'll be interesting." He's also well aware of the challenge the 1000 brings, but he

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