New NOLA track is tearing up tires, but Josh Hayes is still the one to beat; Hayden, Young, Eslick follow
NEW ORLEANS, LA, OCT 5 – We’ve seen this before. Not Monster Energy Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes taking the provisional pole-he’s taken nine of ten poles this season. What we’ve seen is new tracks tearing up tires, especially fronts, and riders having to figure out a way to adapt.
That was the case in Friday AMA Superbike qualifying on the first day of competition at NOLA Motorsports Park across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. The hardest tires Dunlop had were tearing, both front and rear, and Hayes said he might have to find a way to conserve the tires in the race. As it was, there were corners he found scary the more the tires wore, so he backed off to find a solution.
In the end he backed off less than the others and took the provisional pole by nearly a second on Jordan Suzuki’s Roger Hayden, the only rider other than Hayes to be on pole this season. Hayden took the pole in the previous round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he earned his breakthrough first win in difficult conditions on Saturday. But today’s conditions were hot and sunny, as they’re expected to be all weekend, and the riders had not rain to deal with but a hot track with little rubber on it.
The conditions aren’t dissimilar to what happened the first times AMA motorcycles tested and raced at Barber Motorsports Park. Once the track got more rubber on it, it was fine. (It was also eventually repaved.) And it’s expected that the track conditions should improve over the course of this weekend as more rubber gets put down.
aPhoto Gallery: AMA New Orleans Friday provisional qualifying report - Sport Rider Magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment