AMERICAN ROAD RACING CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 20 MAY 19, 2015 P107
got some good results here. I
guess it just suits me well to the
style that I ride with. I have a lot
of fun riding around here."
After a disastrous weekend at
Road Atlanta, Yoshimura Su-
zuki's Roger Hayden bounced
back strong with a 3-2 at VIR.
His pair of podium finishes
moved the Kentuckian from
seventh to fourth in the
series standings.
"I really want to thank
my whole team," Hayden
said after the successful
VIR weekend. "I really felt
bad after Atlanta. They had
to go to North Carolina for
three days and build me
two bikes for this weekend.
So I'm really appreciative of
the whole Yoshimura crew.
It was a tough race [race
two]. Cameron [Beaubier]
was pushing me hard so I
never really had the time
to take a breather. Around
lap 18 I picked up the pace
to see if I could get a little
bigger gap. It was a good
race. I was glad to have a
solid 25 laps and maybe at
Road America we can be a
little stronger."
Hayden's teammate
Jake Lewis had one of
those weekends Superbike
rookies are bound to have
now and again. He finished
5-4 in his third Superbike
weekend. The long face on
Lewis turned around a bit in race
two, when the team made some
setting changes that helped with
front end traction and Lewis left
somewhat encouraged that he
at least spent some time with the
leaders in the final leg. Lewis is
still third in the title chase.
Briefly...
that the crew's happy, everyone's
happy. I think that's been the tough-
est part; and the riding is probably
one of the easier parts at this point.
I want to keep moving forward, keep
my sponsors happy. That's kind of
the goal for this year and we've been
able to do that at every race this year,
so I'm pleased with that part."
Former World and AMA Superbike
Champion Doug Polen was on hand
to ride a Lap of Honor at VIR. Polen
filled in for Jamie Hacking, who was
unable to attend due to scheduling
conflicts. He stepped right in and
during the Fan Walk Polen's tent had
the longest lines of the weekend.
Another AMA superbike star of the
past, Dale Quarterley, who is help-
ing coach some young riders, was
also seen walking the paddock with
his son. Polen and Quarterley also
spent a good amount of time on the
PA with announcer Brian Drebber.
Josh Hayes found just enough
speed to hold off his Monster Energy
Graves Yamaha teammate Cameron
Beaubier by 3-100ths of a second
to win the pole for MotoAmerica
Superbike races at VIR with a time
of 1:24.868. It was notable in that
Hayes managed to win the pole run-
ning the same set of tires during the
entire 20-minute Superpole ses-
sion. "We knew it was a short ses-
sion," Hayes explained. "We needed
some laps and we wanted to take that
tire and just see how it held up and
see how many good laps we could
get out of it. We wanted to evaluate
it that way." Beaubier was caught out
by the checkered flag at the end of
the session, ruining any chance he
had at trying to cut a faster lap at
the end. "I came around and saw
continued on next page
Roger Hayden (95) and
Cameron Beaubier (6) made
trips to both Superbike
podiums.
