AMERICAN ROAD RACING CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 29 JULY 21, 2015 P105
Briefly...
I like this track. People always ask
me my favorite track and I always
say Laguna just because the results
are always good. So if I win at Indy
I guess that'll be my new favorite
track."
Laguna Seca marked the first race
that the MotoAmerica Superbike/
Superstock 1000 class was allowed
to race with open pipes. Without the
noise restriction, the bikes sounded
impressive, similar to the MotoGP
that used to lap around the dry lake.
While a lot of the Yamahas were run-
ning them, they were absent at the
Yoshimura Suzuki squad. "We've
been doing quite a bit of develop-
ment and testing," said Yoshimura
Suzuki's Don Sakakura. "Honestly
we haven't found, to this stage,
something that performs better than
what we're currently using. So, we're
going to continue with that and see if
we can find something maybe before
the next round or before Jersey. But
at this stage we're not interested to
change the muffler for sound, unless
we're making more power perfor-
mance. So again, exhaust is a pretty
integral part of the whole entire
package, as you can imagine, to en-
gine spec to camshafts, it all ties in
together. So you change one com-
ponent like that, it's pretty critical on
the whole balance of the engine. So
we haven't found a noisy exhaust yet.
Honestly it was surprising for us to
see that, but I think we've been using
this package for a while now, so it's
fairly well developed. It works fairly
well the way it is so we're going to
leave it for now."
Superbike titles, two Formula
Extreme titles and an AMA
Superstock title. So he knows a
thing or two about tire strategy.
Race one of the MotoAmerica
Superbike/Superstock double-
header at Mazda Raceway
Laguna Seca was all about tire
strategy. Mother Nature decided
to throw another challenge at the
riders on the infamous technical
2.238-mile circuit—rain. Rather
than staying wet, things got com-
plicated again when the track
started to dry out again.
The wise choice was slicks.
Not everyone made that choice.
Hayes did.
"I've been around for a little
while," Hayes said. "The last
nez, 27, and Daniel Rivas, 35,
both of Spain. Martinez and
Rivas succumbed to injuries fol-
lowing a multi-rider incident that
took place just moments after
the start of the race, before the
crest of turn one. Also involved
were HSBK Racing Aprilia's
Devon McDonough, Zlock
Racing's Kevin Pinkstaff and
Josh Chisum, the three were all
treated at the on-track medical
center and later released.
It is not yet known exactly
what caused the chain-reaction
crash.
Class Is In Session
It's clearly not Josh Hayes'
first rodeo. He has champion-
ships under his belt—four AMA
