Blake Young's Winning Talk

Henny Ray Abrams | April 18, 2010

BRASELTON, GA, APRIL 18: There was no champagne spray to celebrate Blake Young’s first American SuperBike win. Instead the Rockstar Makita Suzuki was in the shower of his motor home after getting a massage to work out the kinks in his arms from Saturday’s race at Road Atlanta. When he came out of the shower, his mentor Kevin Schwantz relayed a text he’d gotten that Young had been declared the winner. Young had finished second on the track to Team Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes, but Young suspected the results would change. Hayes had clearly jumped the start, which earned him a ridethrough penalty. As he was riding down pit lane serving the penalty, starting his fifth lap, the race was red flagged.Because he was leading on the third lap, the last complete lap for the whole field, Hayes was put on the pole position for the re-start. It appeared he’d served no penalty for jumping the start. Yoshimura Suzuki and Jordan Suzuki both filed protests that he hadn’t completed the penalty since he hadn’t rejoined an active race track.Hayes went on to win the race, passing Young for the lead in Turn 10 on the 17th of 20 laps. Tommy Hayden was third. Well after the podium ceremony the AMA agreed that Hayes hadn’t served his penalty and he was assessed a 21.4 secs. penalty. That put Hayes down in sixth and gave Young the win.”We were just sitting in the motor home and Kev (Schwantz) ended up getting a text and I was in the shower, you could say,” Young said on Sunday morning. “I was getting my arms worked on. They were pumped up a little bit from yesterday, trying to get them calmed down.”Young thought the order might change when he pulled into victory lane.”I knew something was going to happen, because as soon as we got off the bike, I went over to the crew and asked if they were going to file a protest and they said, ‘yeah,’ so I knew something was going to happen,” he said.

“Basically, kinda everybody at the AMA just told me to kinda calm down and talk about the race, don’t talk about the situation. Which, I mean, there’s people in charge of the new AMA, so it’s time for them to shine. Just let them handle it and whatever they see. It was their mistake. We just rode a race and Josh (Hayes) ended up getting by us there at the end.”Asked if it had sunk in that he’d won his first Superbike race, he said, “No, not really. Didn’t really feel like a win to me. Yeah, we won. Realistically, shouldn’t have been there. Yeah, I mean it didn’t feel like a real win. We’ll just ride hard today, get a real, real win.”The order behind Hayes was Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden, Jordan Suzuki’s Jake Zemke, Pat Clark Motorsports’ Yamaha’s Ben Bostrom, and M4 Monster Energy Suzuki’s John Hopkins. Hopkins was forced to start from the back row after being forced to fit a new tire during the red flag delay when a tire problem was discovered as he returned to the pits.

Blake Young’s Winning Talk