Hacking Finishes on Down Note

Henny Ray Abrams | May 31, 2009

Jamie Hacking finished his first World Superbike weekend with the Kawasaki team wanting more.Hacking’s seventh in the red flag-interrupted race one was the team’s best finish of the season, and seven places higher than the best of the rider he was replacing, Makoto Tamada. But race two was far less successful, with off-track excursions and a collision that took out fellow Kawasaki rider Luca Scassa.But Hacking never gave up and finished the race in 19th, the final rider to cross the line.

“Yeah, it was definitely something that was not one that I wanted,” he said. “Like Ben (Spies) told me, you can’t expect to come in here and put two solid good races together. ‘Look at my results the first few rounds; I made mistakes’ and this and that.”Hacking recovered from an eventful first corner in the first race, but had less luck in race two. He came together with teammate Broc Parkes and found himself in 21st at the end of the first lap.Hacking was up to 18th on lap four when he came together with Scassa in turn five. Scassa probably didn’t see him, believed Hacking, who was “all the way on the inside of the race track and he kept coming and I just ended up spinning him out, basically is what it was. And I ran off the race track too.”That put Hacking to the back of the field again, but he never gave up, “because I wanted to put in a good solid result. Not just for me, but for those guys. I know that they really would’ve enjoyed another solid result to keep the morale in the team going.”Then he would run off the track one more time, this time because of front end chatter.”What I wanted to do, even though I was by myself, I wanted to put in some solid lap times and show those guys that I’m not a quitter,” he said. “Even though we’re back in 20th place, I don’t quit. I give 110% performance no matter where I’m at on the race track.”With three weeks until the next round in Misano, no clash with an AMA race, and Tamada unlikely to be healthy, Hacking is hoping for a second chance. Two things have to happen; he has to be asked by the team and he has to get the OK from his Monster Energy Attack Kawasaki team.”It’s just a matter of people making decisions and asking me what I want to do,” he said. “Obviously, we know the answer to that. It’s just people making decisions and answering them and getting everything sorted out, pretty much is all it comes down to.”