Young Takes Daytona Superbike

Paul Carruthers | March 11, 2011

DAYTONA BEACH, FL, MARCH 11 – A lot of people may have forgotten that Blake Young ended a season in which he suffered a broken neck on a high, winning the final race of the season at Barber Motorsports Park. He reminded them today with a thrilling victory in the first of two Superbike races at Daytona International Speedway.Young came out on top of a race-long battle that featured five riders and came down to a typical Daytona drafting war out of the final chicane after 15 furious laps. Monster Energy Graves Motorsports Yamaha’s Josh Hayes did most of the leading and he led out of the chicane on the final lap. And that wasn’t a good spot for him as his R1 has been down on top speed all week. Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden was the first to pull out of Hayes draft to take the lead, but he couldn’t do anything about his teammate Young storming past at the finish line.”It just seemed like I could get by ‘em and get a draft when I really needed it,” Young said. “It seems like the GSX-R1000 is the bike to be on right now.”For the third race in a row here at Daytona, Tommy Hayden was second – and o so close. In fact, he was just .026 behind Young at the stripe.”I knew it would be hard to beat Blake there at the end,” Tommy Hayden said. “I made a little mistake on the last lap and I wasn’t sure exactly what position I wanted to be in. It was a fun race and we were riding hard. I’m disappointed with my third second in a row here.”Hayes was just as close in third and happy with the start of his season considering how bad he’d suffered here last year – and still went on to take the Superbike crown.

“I rode a good race, but these guys beat me today,” Hayes said.Fourth place went to Michael Jordan Motorsports’ Ben Bostrom, the veteran in the mix until the very end and coming up half a second short. His teammate Roger Lee Hayden, on the National Guard-backed Jordan Suzuki, was fifth. Roger Lee had also been in the lead pack before fading a bit in the closing laps. He ended up 2.6 seconds off Young.Sixth place went to M4 Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas in his Superbike debut. Cardenas rode mostly alone, some 14 seconds behind the leaders.Larry Pegram rode his Foremost Insurance-backed BMW to seventh with Jeremy Toye, Chris Ulrich and David Anthony filling the top 10.The race was red flagged on the opening lap when Chris Peris went down in a separate accident from the one that also knocked Eric Bostrom out of the race on the Cycle World/Attack Kawasaki. According to Bostrom, he was hit by Australian Chris Trounson and both riders crashed.

Superbike Final

1.                  Blake Young (Suzuki)

2.                  Tommy Hayden (Suzuki)

3.                  Josh Hayes (Yamaha)

4.                  Ben Bostrom (Suzuki)

5.                  Roger Lee Hayden (Suzuki)

6.                  Martin Cardenas (Suzuki)

7.                  Larry Pegram (BMW)

8.                  Jeremy Toye (BMW)

9.                  Chris Ulrich (Suzuki)

10.                  David Anthony (Suzuki)

Paul Carruthers | Editor

Paul Carruthers took over as the editor of Cycle News in 1993 after serving as associate editor since starting his career at the publication in 1985. Carruthers has covered every facet of the sport in his near-28-year tenure at America's Daily Motorcycle News Source.