Monster Energy Graves Yamaha's Josh Hayes gets fifth pole in a row
BIRMINGHAM, AL, JUNE 18 – No one gets the importance of maximum effort like Josh Hayes. The Monster Energy Graves Yamaha rider understands better than everyone else that the more time he spends on top, the more it pays off. The evidence is in the point standings.
After keeping alive a perfect season of pole performances with his fifth in a row on a warm morning at Barber Motorsports Park, Hayes goes into today’s Superbike race with an 11 point lead on Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Blake Young (fifth fastest). Every one of those points has been a bonus. Five came from his poles and the other six from leading the most laps in every race but one. Today, on a warm morning in Alabama that will certainly get much warmer, Hayes took a while to get going, but once he did he was untouchable. In fact, even his Friday time was untouchable. Hayes took his fifth consecutive pole by lapping the 2.38-mile, 14-turn road course in 1:25.911 mins. His Friday time was 1:25.980 mins. and no one else broke the 1:25 barrier. On his first flying lap out of the pits late in the 40-minute session he bettered his Friday time, but there was more to come. After a lap in the 1:26’s, he put together the best lap of the weekend, the 1:25.911. “It was a good session,” the Mississippi native said. “We tried a few things with the bike, we tried a couple different shock settings trying to make some improvements. They made improvements in some areas, didn’t in others. So we went through two or three evolutions of that.” Hayes admitted that he “was a little slow getting up to speed” and wasn’t able to match his Friday time early in the session. “It seemed like, I don’t know if it’s a combination of two things…the heat, I thought, hurt grip today and slowed the track down a little bit. But it also could just be the settings that we came up with with the bike. Whenever we get done here I’ll go sit down and evaluate and see what we come up with for the race.” Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden finished with the second fastest time after he, too, had trouble getting started. “We were trying a few things at the beginning and didn’t quite get down to the times we were doing yesterday real fast,” he began, “but towards the end when we started looking at new tires, it seemed like the times came back to about what they were yesterday, relatively, seemed like, easy. But then just couldn’t get any faster. I don’t know. I did three or four of those laps within a tenth at different points through the end of that session and just seemed like that was it today. It didn’t seem like I was able to really go any faster. I thought I was doing each section maybe a little better at a time, but I never really put a whole lap together that could’ve got me down into the 25’s, like I’d hoped.” Tommy’s younger brother, Roger Lee, had the National Guard Jordan Suzuki in third until the very end of the session when Team Iron Horse BMW-ESP’s Chris Peris put in his best ever Superbike qualifying effort. That dropped Roger Lee to the end of the front row. “The last lap there we kinda just threw on one of the softer tires and just went for it,” Peris said after qualifying third. “A lot of people were sitting up waiting for a tow and I just had some nice open track for the last two laps, so I just kinda put my head down and really just tried to throw in a quick lap. We were all pretty stoked at the time. “We’re hoping for good things for the race. I think we’re going to have a few more changes to make to see if we can get that other tire to work a little bit better, but it’s all going in a great direction.” Roger Lee Hayden got off to a slow start on the weekend, missing much of Friday’s first session before the team fixed a small problem. And he’s concerned about his time gap to the leaders. “We just had a few little problems, but overall the bike’s been really good,” Roger Lee Hayden said after his lap of 1:26.542 mins. “We missed a lot of the first session with some little issue we had. But besides that the bike’s really working good. It’s getting better all the time and I feel like we’re really making some steps. We’re still a little over half a second off these guys, which is a lot around this place, but I feel like we’re getting closer and hopefully we have a good race today.” Superbike Qualifying: 1. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 1:25.911 2. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 1:26.054 3. Chris Peris (BMW) 1:26.530 4. Roger Lee Hayden (Suzuki) 1:26.542 5. Blake Young (Suzuki) 1:26.671 6. Martin Cardenas (Suzuki) 1:26.679 7. Steve Rapp (BMW) 1:26.751 8. Ben Bostrom (Suzuki) 1:26.763 9. Larry Pegram (BMW) 1:27.053 10. Geoff May (Buell) 1:27.088Photo Gallery: 2011 AMA Pro Barber Motorsports Park final qualifying results—Hayes stays perfect - Sport Rider Magazine
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