Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 29 JULY 22, 2014 P81 good run and I thought, 'What am I going to do?' " With the scenarios playing out in his head and little time to make a decision, Hayes was again unable to get close enough to dive under his teammate on the brakes at the end of the back straight. That left him with no choice but to use a mulligan on the move that failed him a few hours earlier. This time Hayes pressed the is- sue in the way he teased he might had it not been for the need to play it safe with both his title ad- vantage and his teammate. Hayes slotted in alongside Beaubier and held him out wide, preventing the prodigy from pulling off another over-under counter. From there Hayes only need- ed to keep Beaubier corralled behind him through a handful of unfriendly passing zones. The usually precise Hayes ran some unconventional lines but that was by design; he merely wanted to hit the apex first and then drive to the next one, preventing Beau- bier from finding a way through. However, things got a bit too unconventional negotiating the final section where the Carousel right-hander transitions back left and onto the short start/finish line straight. Hayes made a major mistake attempting to adjust his line just as Beaubier positioned himself to attempt the final strike that is so often tried at Mid-Ohio but almost never actually comes to fruition. Off line, Hayes was unable to get a decent launch out of the final corner. Beaubier, however, sprung out on exit and ripped right up alongside Hayes as they took the checkered flag. Timing and scoring initially showed that Beaubier had again aced Hayes - this time by an im- possibly slim .001 of a second. However, while both men took the victory lap uncertain whose victory lap they were celebrat- ing, a review of a finish-line pho- Briefly... going." Conner Blevins scored his first ca- reer podium in the second Mid-Ohio SuperSport race. The latest in what has become a pretty good line of rid- ers from Oklahoma. "Off the start I instantly went into third, and the bike was working really well," Blevins said. "I hung with Dustin [Dominguez] and Hayden [Gillim] until mid-race, then made a couple of mistakes and de- cided to run my own race and not charge so hard. I checked my gap to fourth a couple of times, and man- aged it to the end." On the podium, Conner thanked his dad Robert Blevins, who builds and tunes Con- ner's ZX-6R. "We had a rough start to the season, but my dad has got- ten the bike working really well now," said Conner. "Also, the new tires that Dunlop brought this weekend were great, lots of grip and they looked really good at the end of the races." Corey Alexander reported it was a brake failure on his Celtic/HVMC Racing Suzuki that put him out be- fore the start of the second Supers- port race. That DNS, combined with a crash in the first race put Alexan- der, who early in the season looked like he was going to be unbeatable in the class, out of serious contention for the championship. Saturday an off again light rain finally put an end to the efforts to race any of the classes at Mid-Ohio and at just after 6 p.m. local time AMA Pro Rac- ing officials finally pulled the plug on trying to get any racing done. The subject of racing in the rain at Mid-Ohio is still not a settled subject. The top Superbike riders were asked Cardenas (36) leads KTM's Chris Fillmore in race two. Fillmore ended up fifth and fourth in the two races; Cardenas was fourth in race one, but crashed out of race two. continued on next page

• Cover