Miller AMA Test: Day Two

Henny Ray Abrams | May 3, 2011

Monster Energy Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes took more than half a second off his Monday time to finish with the fastest lap over two days of testing at Miller Motorsports Park.Hayes lapped the 3.06-mile Perimeter Course in 1:50.333, compared to the 1:50.884 he’d run on Monday. He might have gone faster had rain not interrupted the final session.Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Blake Young finished with the second fastest time, 1:50.840, with Larry Pegram up to third at 1:51.215. Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden finished fourth overall, despite not riding on Tuesday. Hayden was sidelined with food poisoning. M4 Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas finished fifth overall.Dunlop brought four different tires to the test and it wasn’t certain who was using what at any given time. One or two of the softer tires were clearly faster, by as much as three-quarters of a second, though they wouldn’t last race distance.

“Blake [Young] focused on using the medium to hard compound and did a lot of laps on those,” Young’s crew chief Peter Doyle said. “Everyone missed that last session a bit. It started to rain and turned messy. You probably would’ve been some low 50s or high 49s if you threw in the soft rubber.”The third rider on the Rockstar Makita Suzuki was Josh Waters (pictured), the Australian who’s going to ride as a wild card for the Yoshimura Suzuki Japan team in the Miller Motorsport Park World Superbike races. Waters improved from 11th to seventh overall, and lowered his lap time by two seconds.”Cool track, really cool track,” Waters said in a phone conversation from MMP, adding that he’d wished the last of four sessions hadn’t been hit by rain. “It’s fast and it flows really good. Hard to join up.”Waters rode a 2010 Rockstar Makita Suzuki at the test, which is quite a bit different from what he races in the Australian Superbike Championship, and also different from the World Superbike-spec Suzuki GSX-R1000 he’ll race in the combined AMA/WSB weekend on Memorial Day weekend.”It was great to come over and learn the circuit and hopefully have good times when I come back in the end of May,” he said. “I just rode a lot of the time on my own. One person who was really helpful was Josh Hayes. He’s a great guy. ‘Anything you need to know just come and ask,’ he told me.”Waters, who isn’t contesting the entire Australian Superbike Championship, missed the fourth round of the series at Barbagallo Raceway to take part in the test. He’s spending the rest of the month in the U.S. until the MMP race at the end of the month.”Might even go watch the next round of the AMA [at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California],” he said.Following the MMP race, he flies home to take part in the round five at Queensland Raceway.

Superbike Day Two Times:

1. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 1:50.333

2. Blake Young (Suzuki) 1:50.840

3. Larry Pegram (BMW) 1:51.215

4. Tommy Hayden (Suzuki) 1:51.255

5. Martin Cardenas (Suzuki) 1:51.351

6. Roger Hayden (Suzuki) 1:51.602

7. Josh Waters (Suzuki) 1:51.733

8. Chris Peris (BMW) 1:51.766

9. Steve Rapp (BMW) 1:51.774

10. Chris Clark (Yamaha) 1:51.941

Daytona Sportbike Day Two Times:

1. Jason DiSalvo (Ducati) 1:55.254

2. PJ Jacobsen (Ducati) 1:55.596

3. Josh Herrin (Yamaha) 1:56.543

4. Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha) 1:56.881

5. Cory West (Suzuki) 1:56.981SuperSport Day Two Times: 1. David Gaviria (Yamaha) 1:57.988

2. Benny Solis (Honda) 1:58.348

3. Corey Alexander (Suzuki) 1:58.615

4. Tomas Puerta (Yamaha) 1:58.767

5. Quentin Wilson (Ducati) 2:00.655XR1200 Day Two Times:1. Kyle Wyman (2:08.637)

2. Chase McFarland (2:08.964)

3. Joe Kopp (2:09.085)

4. Gerry Signorelli (2:09.837)

5. Chris Fillmore (2:09.872)

 

 

Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor

Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.