Hayden holds off Hacking for Supersport win

Hayden holds off Hacking for Supersport win

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Roger Hayden held off a dogged pursuit from teammate Jamie Hacking to claim the 2007 Pro Honda Oils Supersport season opener today at Daytona International Speedway.

Despite leading every lap minus an early race shuffle, Hayden appeared to be the decided underdog as the 22-lap contest played out. After breaking the early ten-bike freight train for the lead, Kawasaki teammates Hayden and Hacking flexed their muscles and relegated the rest of the field to a fight for third.

Reigning champ Hacking appeared to have his new teammate just where he wanted him, sitting right behind the Kentuckian’s tail the entire contest, seemingly waiting to employ a carefully mapped-out final lap strategy.

However, Hacking’s plans went up in smoke when he got sideways entering the back straight for the final time, enabling Hayden to get just the gap he needed to power his ZX-6RR to the checkered flag 0.368 seconds in front of his rival.

The win was Roger’s second straight Daytona Supersport triumph (making him only the second man to ever achieve that feat), and his 12th career Supersport win, tying him with Aaron Yates for fourth all time. But he’s still seeking his first class crown.

After the race he commented, “As far as the championship goes, I think I have as good as shot as anybody.

“It was big, long race for me, leading the whole time. I could tell on my lap timer that my pace was really good. Every time going into Turn 1 I could see Jamie’s shadow behind me, lap after lap. As the laps were winding down, I was just hoping he wasn’t just letting me do all the work only to draft me at the end.

“The bike’s really come around since I first rode it. It took me a while to come to grips with it. The team has done an awesome job since we were here in December. The first couple laps with the other bikes, it was like we were cheating. I felt like I was in the wrong class we were so much faster than the other guys.

“Hopefully we can carry this on for the rest of the year.”

While Hacking was indeed trying to do exactly what Roger feared, his last lap mishap proved costly. “I made a mistake and that’s all it took. One little mistake and Rog managed to pull the gap on me. We were both riding very well. The Monster Energy Kawasaki ZX-6RR… as I said out there on the podium, it’s very hard to catch a motorcycle that’s as fast as yours.

“Rog came around and pulled the victory off but it’s a long season. This is just one little race of the eleven races we’ve got. Coming out of here in one piece with a motorcycle that’s sitting on the podium, that’s all you can ask for.”

While the powerful Kawasaki duo ruined any hopes for a huge multi-rider drafting war for the win, those behind them obliged in the dogfight for the final place on the podium. Early leader Michael Barnes, the surprising Corey West on the Team Hunter bike, Yoshimura Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden, second Team M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Geoff May, Erion Honda’s Josh Hayes, and Attack Kawasaki teammates Ben Attard and Steve Rapp furiously swarmed around the famed circuit’s high banks, trading positions repeatedly.

As the laps wore down, two-time champ Hayden finally broke free of the fight in his debut outing for Yosh, claiming the last position on the podium some three seconds in front of fourth-placed Barnes and fifth-placed Hayes.

Hayden remarked, “Until the last two or three laps I was surrounded by four or five people the entire time. I got a good run with a lapper and got to the lead of the pack and then from there put my head down, knowing that was my best chance.

“Obviously me or anybody else didn’t have anything for (the Kawasakis) today. They checked out pretty quick and were riding pretty good. They really had it rolling. Pretty much as soon as we took off the first lap or two, I could tell that I was going to have to try and pull off a podium because that was about as good as I was going to do today.”

Attard and Rapp took sixth and seventh, while Celtic Racing’s Chaz Davies took a lonely eighth, storming past May at the end after the Georgian ran out of gas on the final lap and cruised to ninth.

One-time third-place runner Cory West crashed out of podium contention on lap 17 but battled back to round out the top ten on his Team Hunter R6.