File Photography by Brian J. Nelson
MONTEREY, CA, JULY 11 – The Cameron Beaubier vs. Josh Hayes saga picked up today at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca with Beaubier ending up the quicker of the two in the first qualifying session, thus earning provisional pole for Sunday’s Superbike National.
Championship leader Hayes was the quicker of the two for the majority of the session, with Beaubier throwing down his 1:24.433 right at the very end to snatch the spot away from his veteran teammate. Hayes was just .195 of a second off his teammate’s best.
“It was good. I was struggling there in the beginning getting down to a time,” said Beaubier, who looked back to his old self after a miserable round at Barber Motorsports Park three weeks ago. “We threw a new soft in at the end and I got a couple of good laps in but made a couple of mistakes and then had a good last lap. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and try to better my time and get ready for the race.”
Hayes didn’t seem overly perplexed at how things turned out and was happy to have run a consistently quick pace throughout the session.
“Everything was going okay,” Hayes said. “Another weekend at Laguna Seca. It’s not like quite the last World Superbike weekend when we’d already raced here once [with MotoGP]. It’s been awhile since we’ve been here so it’s taken a bit longer to get up to speed. Also the new Dunlop front tire has been a little bit of a challenge for me and I’m working a few things. I didn’t get the outright fastest lap, but I’ve definitely been able to string together some good laps and body wise I feel really good on the motorcycle. I feel pretty good. In the middle of the session we actually thought we were going to be done. We had a little miscount on the tire allotment and we thought we didn’t have enough tires and we were going to sit out the rest of the session and then we figured it out. It was a last-minute deal to jump out there at the end. I’m going in circles and having a good time.”
Yoshimura Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas was the best of the non-Yamahas, the Colombian ending up third with a 1:25.521 – a tick over a second behind Beaubier. Still he was quicker than this teammate Roger Hayden by a scant .195 of a second.
KTM’s Chris Fillmore rounded out the top five on the opening day.
2014 Laguna Seca
AMA Superbike Qualifying One Results
1. Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha) 1:24.433
2. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 1:24.628
3. Martin Cardenas (Suzuki) 1:25.521
4. Roger Hayden (Suzuki) 1:25.716
5. Chris Fillmore (KTM) 1:25.903
6. David Anthony (Suzuki) 1:26.400
7. Bernat Martinez (Yamaha) 1:26.979
8. Jake Holden (Ducati) 1:27.312
9. Cory West (EBR) 1:27.366
10. Chris Clark (Suzuki) 1:27.541
