Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 37 SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 P45 of rubbed me and I thought, 'Okay, now if something happens he asked for it.' " The final lap was riveting with both riders going side by side through turns and edging in front here and there. Out of the final turn Hayden led, but his rear tire broke loose and started spinning up on the wet pavement. That ruined his drive and Hayes was able to sweep around to take the victory. The two had lapped up to fourth place. Later that evening AMA Pro Racing officials announced that Hayes had passed Hayden ear- lier in the race under a waving yellow. Hayes reasonably argued that the flagman was in a posi- tion that he was shielded from seeing because of the spray off Briefly... affected me, it was my right one. I tried to push hard to the end. Over- all, I think we might have missed the setup a little bit, but it's tough being my first time down here. Overall I'm pleased. I hope to come back and race here more in the future. That's been my goal since I started racing." Danny Eslick had a rare get off on the Harley-Davidson XR1200 in qualifying that almost cost him a shot at the title. He described what hap- pened. "I ran off the track and wad- ded it up in the wet grass this morn- ing and pretty much destroyed that motorcycle," Eslick said. "The Trev Deeley/Ruthless Racing team bust- ed their butts from the time I crashed the motorcycle until the moments before the race. We were pretty close to not making it. I've ridden it three seasons now and that's the first time I've crashed it. It's bound to happen and the way these guys are riding - they're riding incredibly. The level that this Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson Series has risen to is unbelievable. I used to be able to play around and sandbag a little bit and still have a shot at it, but now you really have to be on your game and work on your set up. Hats off to ev- erybody out there." Dustin Dominguez turned to a men- tal coach to try to give him an edge on his competition this season. "It kind of works a lot like a therapist for racing if that makes sense," Domin- guez said. "There's a few people that use them, but I think a lot of people kind of keep it to themselves. It's dif- ferent, but it works. His [coach's] fa- vorite line is "You perform your best when your stress is least.' near future we're going to see some regrowth of our series." Sakakura, like most, chose not to directly blame any single entity for where the series stands today, but takes a broader view. "With the timing of the economy, I think there are several factors that have been involved; we've all been challenged by these last five or six years. I think it's affected us all – manufacturers, race teams, spon- sors, everyone included. It appears that with the new group there is a different vision and hopefully it will affect the regrowth of the series. I think there's been great racing and we've had the very strong support of Suzuki throughout this whole ordeal and Yamaha has been very strongly supportive [of the series] as well." Sakakura would love to see the other manufacturers come back to the series. "It would be great," he said. "Some- day if there's interest there for them. I mean I think back and competition is always nice. Multi-brand competition is always good with the size of the series a lot of these young riders really don't have solid seats that they can look forward to jumping into someday. So obviously with more manufactur- ers in the series, more opportunities might open for them. "It's easy to point fingers, but I think with hindsight there were a lot of things we questioned initially. Dif- ferent theories on how to grow the series. I think initially the thought was to implement some of the four-wheel type of regulations or policies targeted at racing, such as rolling starts and things like that. Obviously that's not going to work out for the two-wheel environment. But they [DMG] were receptive and I think they responded quickly. I can't blame anybody in particular. I think with the way the economy crashed and everybody was upside down. I mean we still haven't fully recovered from that, but I'm not here to blame or point fingers. I think everybody has done their very best. I think teams that have hung in there and many others, we just hope to see the regrowth of the series again to where it should be." Larry Lawrence Don Sakakura (left) has been around AMA Superbike racing for a long time.

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