SUPERBIKE
AMA SUPERBIKE SERIES
ROUNDS 1-2/MARCH 14-15, 2014
DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY/DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA
P44
PRACTICE,
PRACTICE,
PRACTICE
Although not finishing either race
at Daytona last year put a damper on
his season last year, Josh Hayes was
able to fight his way back into con-
tention. What ultimately cost him a
fourth AMA Superbike crown was the
three times he got nailed for jumping
the start.
At the end of last year, Hayes
vowed that it wasn't going to happen
again. He had work to do to change
his ways when it came to his starting
procedure and he says he made those changes during
the off-season. Though it's still a work in progress.
"The biggest thing when you're practicing starts it's
not so much anything other than, after all the rolling
starts of last year, there was a lot of pressure put on me
to put my foot on the rear brake, which is hard for me and
it's still hard for me. It's a matter of I used to just hold it
with my legs, but the bike is pretty tall and basically when
I would find the point on the clutch where it would start
to engage/disengage and then I went to the limiter, that's
where I had to try to hold the bike and it
crept forward. And I got in trouble for that
before. Now with my foot on the brake
and, with our launch strategy, you have
to hold the thing wide open so my elbow
and my knee are all tied up in a knot on
the startline.
"It's just odd for me and I did practice
it quite a bit. I did a couple yesterday.
It's going to take time. I've been doing
something for 15 years and now I have to
do something different."
You'd think with his past penalties,
Hayes would never get another holeshot for fear that he'd
be docked for jumping the gun, but the three-time AMA
Superbike Champion was first into turn one in Friday's
season opener.
"The big thing was is I just think they didn't get great
starts," Hayes said after winning race one. "They didn't
jump the light really quickly and I didn't think I'd jumped
the light really quickly. The light went off and I went,
'Okay, go.' I just happened to get the clutch out better
than those guys is what it boils down to. There's a lot to it
and I was just able to sneak in front of Rog [Hayden]."
Practice makes perfect: Two races
without a jump start for Josh Hayes.
Chris Clark (6) finished fourth in both races, narrowly beating David
Anthony (25) both times. Cory West (13), Taylor Knapp (44), Bernat
Martinez (76) and Diego Pierluigi (80) give chase.
