Cycle News

AMERICAN ROAD RACING CHAMPIONSHIP VOL. 52 ISSUE 15 APRIL 14, 2015 P87 rain or shine. Mentally I was in a really good state. I was ready to go either way very early in the weekend. So I wasn't too spun up when it got bad conditions." Hayes' young teammate Cam- eron Beaubier, who admittedly was still getting used to riding a 1000 in the wet, was happy to take second in the grand scheme of the championship. "To tell you the truth I'm really happy to get out of here with a second place today," Beaubier said. "Last year I struggled a lot on the Superbike in the wet. It's just a lot different than riding a 600 in the wet. But I think this new R1 is a little more gentle to you, especially in the wet condi- tions. "I think that was a really good race for my confidence, just get a good race in the wet under my belt and build on it. This guy's [Hayes] not the easiest guy to close in on two seconds back." Yoshimura Suzuki's Roger Hayden rounded out the podium in third and was also happy to leave the race with some points. "Yeah, the conditions were a little tough," Hayden said. "I just struggled with some grip early and I lost all my confidence. I just didn't ride that good. These guys did a lot better job than I did today. I'm happy though to get some points, start the sea- son with third. Not really happy with how far back we were but we got two races this weekend so hopefully tomorrow we can do better." Bernat Martinez was fourth on a Yamaha, ahead of rookie Jake Lewis on the other Yoshimura Suzuki. Road Race Factory Yamaha's Jake Gagne took the win in the Superstock 1000 class. The 1000 rookie was fourth overall and in the lead pack early on, but after a few moments (his first race in the wet on the big bike) decided discretion was the bet- ter part of valor and made sure to cross the line first in his class. As the lead four were riding their own races, the battle for the Superstock podium (and fifth overall) was waged between after the sighting lap. Right decisions were made there. "It really gave me a lot of confidence with Stewart Higgs being there. He's seen more of those days than probably dry days with his events in the BSB [British Superbike Championship]. I think we had some good racing and today was a good way to cap it off with Cameron and Josh going at it." Really the only real snafu was the series timing and scoring (which is also all-new and not associated with AMA Pro) and Aksland acknowledged that. "Sure, there were some issues over the weekend on the technical side with timing and scoring," Aksland said. "First day basically we had two access points on the hot bed, which should have been enough. But then we found out that the track had disconnected one of those access points right before we went. So that wasn't a software is- sue, it was an infrastructure issue. "So there were things that we were learning every day, and there were dif- ferent issues all through the weekend. But again, I think it all comes back to this is a new experience for us, dealing with this type of scenario. We under- stand a lot more leaving here than we did coming in for sure. It's going to be rectified. We have some backup plans for Road Atlanta. But I'm confident we'll get the system to work. It's a big invest- ment for us to do this, so we'll get it."

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