AMA Formula Xtreme - Hayes closes in on FX title

AMA Formula Xtreme: Hayes closes in on title

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Erion Honda’s Josh Hayes took another step towards securing a second consecutive Lockhart Phillips USA Formula Xtreme championship on Saturday at Virginia International Raceway. The Mississippian won his sixth race in eight tries this season, passing early leader Larry Pegram on the race’s second lap and never looking back.

Pegram did an admirable job hanging tough, however, the Leo Vince-backed Ducati pilot staying right in Hayes’ tracks over the opening ten laps before fading down the stretch.

Pegram then came under fire from Boulder Motorsports Ducati’s Marty Craggill and the two fought a fierce battle on the race’s final lap to decide the finishing order on the lower two steps of the podium. Pegram’s 749R beat Craggill’s to the checkered flag by a minuscule 0.05 seconds.

Hayes now boasts a massive 286-223 points lead over Attack Kawasaki’s Steve Rapp, who finished seventh on Saturday, meaning that Hayes only needs to finish 18th or better at Road Atlanta to lock up the title with the Laguna Seca finale still on the schedule.

After picking up his first VIR win, Hayes said, “It feels great. I was so disappointed last year. I felt like I had the race won and Eric (Bostrom) kind of swiped that one from me. We came back, we’ve been strong all weekend… I felt very, very confident on race rubber. Even then, we gambled a little bit. We raced on a tire we had not done many laps on. I couldn’t go outright as fast as I had in the morning warm-up. I was struggling because I was trying really hard. I could hear that big machine behind me. And I knew he was right there just waiting for me to mess up. The tire never really had the grip I wanted, but the Dunlops are so good that it worked really well, enough that I could maintain my pace throughout race distance, which I was really pleased about today.”

“Honda’s built such a great bike this year and I’m riding the best I’ve ever ridden in my life. I’m having a lot of fun. These guys are still making me race for it. It seems to be just the second half of the race -- I seem to have them a little more comfortable when the tires get pretty beat up. They figure that out, it’s going to be a long series if I end up doing this again next year.”

Asked if he’ll take it easy and just cruise to the title in two weeks time, Hayes said, “Absolutely not. Having that one race gap kind of gives me the comfort of I can still go out there and go for it. Road Atlanta’s a really good racetrack for me. It’s like home. I think I’ll have a lot of family and friends there. My crew spends too much time away from their family and their friends working on their motorcycle for me to go out there and ride around. So we’re going to go there, we’re going to try to get every point, try to win that thing. And there’s still two races left. And on top of that, the momentum that I carry out of FX definitely goes into my Supersport program and I have a hard time differentiating between the two. So I need to ride the FX bike strong and confident so that it bleeds into my Supersport program so I can do my job there too.”

Runner-up Pegram said, “The problem is I’m running with a guy that’s not making any mistakes and he’s on the limit of what these machines are capable of doing. To beat him you’ve got to be on the limit the entire race. We were on the limit for about 2/3s of it and then he got away from us.

“I felt really comfortable behind him. It wasn’t like, ‘man, I can’t keep this pace,’ it was like, ‘this is a okay pace.’ A couple times I even looked up the inside of him in 1 but it was too early to do that and he was pulling me away from the guys behind me. I was sitting there and then about halfway I made a mistake up in the top corner and lost about a second and a half. And then my tire… I couldn’t close it back up and I started slowly losing him and with about five laps to go I went into conservation mode. Someone was coming from behind and I just tried to go but my tire was pretty well shot at that time.”

Commenting on the duel to the strip with Craggill, Pegram explained, “I came out of the last corner coming to the white flag and I don’t know why but the thing wouldn’t shift from second to third. So finally when it shifted I hit it and it shifted from second to fourth so the thing bogged. Marty’s bike I know is as fast as mine so I went, ‘this is bad news.’

“I went to the inside of the straightaway and he pulled up alongside and actually got in front of me a little bit and then going into 1 I just went up the inside of him again. ‘If you’re on the outside I’ll wait until you brake. If all else fails we’re both going straight.’ It was one of them deals. I outbroke him going into 1 and then I just blocked basically, because my tire was pretty well shot.”

Polesitter Ben Attard guided his Attack Kawasaki ZX-6R to fourth place one spot ahead of Team M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas. Cardenas’ one-time 250GP teammate, Chaz Davies, took sixth ahead of Rapp.

Erion Honda’s Aaron Gobert took eighth with Team Hunter’s Cory West and Bettencourts Yamaha’s Jeff Wood completing the top ten.