VOL. 51 ISSUE 28 JULY 15, 2014 P89
When Beaubier failed to at-
tack the two Suzukis of Carde-
nas and Roger Hayden imme-
diately, Hayes was able to pull
away. When Beaubier continued
to trail the pair of GSX-Rs, things
got progressively worse. For all
practical purposes his chances
of victory were evaporating like
the morning Monterey fog on fast
forward.
"I put my head down when I
got around the Yosh guys and I
was trying to click off laps and at
least close the gap a little bit to
Josh," Beaubier said. "I'm pretty
Briefly...
put in 23 solid laps in the race and it
should be a fun day tomorrow."
The Yoshimura Suzukis of Martin
Cardenas and Roger Lee Hayden,
meanwhile, were playing catch-up
with neither rider getting into the
1:24s, much less close to the low
1:24 turned in by Beaubier. The pair
ended up third and fourth on the grid,
but knew it would take a Herculean
effort to run with the two Yamahas in
the race. "I didn't achieve what we
wanted to, which was getting down
to the 24s," Cardenas said on Sat-
urday afternoon. "The bike is feeling
good and I am feeling good on the
bike. The only problem is these two
guys are fast right now and I don't
know… we have to look at the data
and look at the splits and see where
we are losing and try to improve
for the race tomorrow. I don't think
there's much we can try with the bike
now. The bike feels good, but we're
kind of stuck in the low 25s. Maybe
in the race we get behind Cameron
and Josh and figure out where we
are losing time and maybe learn and
try to stay there."
Josh Hayes wasn't surprised by
the fast pace set by the World Su-
perbike riders at Laguna with Tom
Sykes qualifying on pole with a blister-
ing 1:21.811. "Honestly I saw their first
session they were low 23s and if I had
to guess I'd say they did 22s," Hayes
said. "I talked to Chaz [Davies] this
morning and said, 'Man that's fast.'
Last year when they came here they
hadn't been here before as a race
in a lot of years and for pretty much
everyone on the grid it was some-
thing fresh. I half expected them to
get up to speed faster this year and
from what I understand going to the
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