INTERVIEW
JOSH HAYES
P92
As a result, Hayes rolled into
this season's Daytona opener
brandishing his old #4, which in
recent years had been hidden in
the upper corner of a comfort-
able #1 plate.
The demons of 2013 appeared
to have been exorcised when he
scored a narrow .025 of a sec-
ond victory on the high banks in
this year's first contest. However,
the following day proved to be a
flashback to the unfulfilled goals
of a year ago, as Hayes' R1 once
again rolled to a stop, failing in
the midst of a battle for victory.
Reflecting on a third Daytona
DNF in his last four attempts,
Hayes said, "For me personally,
does it suck? Yes. But does it
suck as badly for me as it does for
my team? Probably not. I just felt
bad for the guys at the shop be-
cause of all the hard work they put
in to try to prevent this from hap-
pening.
"If I crash out or do something
silly like that, I'm going to be hard
on myself, but I felt like I was do-
ing a good job. I didn't feel like
it was the end of the world when
I came out of there. But for my
crew, I felt extremely bad be-
cause they've worked so hard
to make sure this doesn't hap-
pen again. And to have another
failure, I think, was a pretty tough
pill for them to swallow - more so
than it was for me. It was just out
of my control.
"Getting the win on Friday was
really good - I just didn't make
many mistakes. The second race
was going pretty well too and
then to have that failure was re-
ally… it was a bummer. For the
guys at the shop, it was probably
the same type of disappointment
I felt when I had gotten myself
back into the championship last
year only to crash out at Miller.
That was the one thing on my
end that I screwed up and it hurt
me really bad. That was probably
the final straw. You can look at
the jumpstarts, but that was the
thing that really hurt my champi-
onship. If I had just finished that
race, I would have still had a real
chance."
Hayes' early 21-point deficit
doesn't sound nearly as imposing
as the 48-point gap he faced last
season following Daytona. But
you factor in three fewer races
on this season's calendar along
with the elimination of the bonus
points formerly handed out for
Hayes and his
trusty steed…
well, if you take
Daytona out of
the equation.
