AMA Superbike: 2011 DIS Race 2 Results

AMA Superbike

For 14 of 15 laps in Race 2 of the AMA Superbike series at Daytona Saturday, the win looked as if it would go the reigning champ Josh Hayes.

But the Monster Energy Graves Yamaha YZF-R1 rider was taken by 0.072 of a second at the start/finish line by Rockstar Makita Suzuki rider Blake Young, who was also the race-1 winner at Daytona International Speedway. Finishing in third was Hayes rival and Young’s teammate, Tommy Hayden. He finished 0.138 behind Blake Young.

At the beginning of the race, Hayes quickly got out front, but a big battle was forming behind between Hayden, Young and rookie American Superbike rider Martin Cardenas on the M4 Suzuki GSX-R. But the Rockstar Makita Suzuki teammates soon pulled away from Cardenas, and began chasing down Hayes.

Cardenas would hold on for fourth, followed by Michael Jordan/National Guard Suzuki rider Ben Bostrom. His teammate, Roger Lee Hayden, was in contention for a top-five finish, but went down on lap seven, allowing Bostrom to run alone to the finish.

Blake Young (Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000) says: "I got off to a little bit of a slow start there, saw Josh put his head down, and congrats to him-he rode a really tough and smart race. More than once I thought, ‘Boy, he’s gone.’ It was everything I could do to stay near him. I hate to kind of win that way, but it seems like it’s kind of the characteristic of the track. I would have liked to get out there and race with him a little bit more, but … like I said.

"He was going really, really well through the infield. I thought he was doing it a lot better than I could; sitting back and watching was all I could do. But I’m happy for my guys, I want to be a contender in the championship, and it’s nice to get out of here with some points. We’re going to a track that Josh really, really likes next and it’s going to be hard for us to stay with him there, but I’m ready for this year, and ready to put up a fight for it."

Josh Hayes (Graves Yamaha YZF-R1) says: "We made a change from yesterday and it was definitely an improvement, so I felt pretty confident and just did my game plant to a T. And I got away with it for what, fourteen laps? I rode the best I could, and the last lap was a good lap-I did everything right, I did exactly what I wanted and tried to do, but you get beat sometimes.

"But that right there, that’s a hard pill to swallow. I did everything right for so long [in this race]…. To get bit there at the line was pretty tough. But like I said, this is glorious compared to how I left Daytona last year. We’ve proved without a doubt that we have a really good bike, so we’ll go home and think about it, go to Infineon, and get back to business. It’s been two good days of racing, and I really enjoyed myself."

Tommy Hayden (Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000) says: "Really, Josh was just setting a really good pace. He’s real fast in the infield, in particularly the second half of the infield; he was getting away two or three bike lengths there every lap. He just kept that up; it just went like that for several laps. A couple times I though maybe we were gonna get close, but he seemed to be able to get that gap somehow. We got into a bit of a battle amongst ourselves-a couple of braking battles going into Turn1-and that wasn’t helping ourselves much I think.

"Overall, it was a pretty good race. I hoped to be able to run a little bit better today-we definitely made some improvements to our entry into the corners … but we gave a little bit of traction away, so overall I kind of leveled out and couldn’t really go any faster than yesterday comfortably. But we’ll take two podiums here. It’s something to start the season, something to build on, and we’ll try to be a little stronger at the next one."

2011 AMA Superbike: Daytona Race 2 Results: