Hacking Qualfiies 17th

Henny Ray Abrams | July 20, 2008

MONTEREY, CA, JULY 18: Jamie Hacking had an eventful second day aboard the Kawasaki ZXRR. The Monster Kawasaki rider had a deceiving amount of rear grip that ended when he lost the front end heading into Rainey Curve. Since the crash came in qualifying, Hacking had no choice but to run back to the pits to jump on his spare bike. He qualified 17th of 18, 2.6 secs. behind pole-sitter Casey Stoner and just in front of teammate Anthony West. “We put a qualifying tire on there towards the end, put my first one on, and they said it’s got a lot of grip, and it has a lot of grip,” he said of the Bridgestone rear. “And I was blown away by the amount of rear grip. I think it’s a little bit too much rear grip for the bike to handle right now. “And got a really good drive out of the Corkscrew. I was on a really good lap (his first two splits were his fastest of the session) and then I come out of some corners and every corner, I was like, I was just shaking my head. I was like, wow! “So I come out of the Corkscrew and got on it and shifted gears and went down the hill and I was moving pretty quick and picked the throttle up and it picked the throttle up and it just drove the front right out from under me. Just lost it there, through Rainey (Curve). Pretty loaded up corner there and just washed the front end out. “There was a couple corners to making a complete first lap and it would have been, I think it would have been a damn good one for sure. I just explained to them that I overrode the front of the bike. They were just agreeing with me. It wasn’t nothing that was unusual.” Earlier in the session he had a vicious tank-slapper exiting turn 11 and heading up the front straight. And when he got to the other end of the longest semi-straight stretch of tarmac, Hacking ran off in turn two. Of the turn 11 wobbler, he said he was getting into the corner so well that he was driving “out a lot harder and I just got out a little wide, got out there on the Astroturf and that stuff doesn’t grip too well. I just held the throttle down. I saw (Valentino) Rossi doing it in a couple of my videos I was watching him and for some reason he made it look a little better than I did. I tried it and I won’t do it again.”