As the old adage goes, “to finish first, you must first finish.”. When it comes to the 2013 AMA Superbike Championship, a young Josh Herrin played that to perfection. At the time, Herrin’s factory Yamaha teammate Josh Hayes had won three straight AMA Superbike titles. In turn, he was more experienced, and he was faster. The 2013 title was Hayes’…
The following is the 18th of our “21 In ‘21” series that highlights one of the 21 AMA Superbike Champions as we move through the 2021 MotoAmerica season – the 45th year of the premier class championship. There must be multiple manufacturers and team owners who kick themselves daily for failing to offer Josh Hayes a Superbike ride earlier in…
February 9th marked the 57th anniversary of The Beatles’ legendary appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” On that fabled Sunday night, a screaming crowd and national television audience of some 73 million viewers tuned in, and the yelling didn’t subside as the quartet sang five songs over two sets, which included “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You,”…
There’s hazing and then there’s Hayes-ing. Fortunately, for Jack Roach he’s only been Hayes-ed. Well, and Fong-ed and Dunham-ed. Hey, it happens when you’re the new kid training at the Hayes compound in Southern California and Roach is most definitely the new kid. “Oh, definitely,” Roach said when asked if he’s been property introduced to Hayes-ing. “I’ve got two big…
A lot of people thought it had something to do with Coca-Cola. They speculated that the partially revealed red-and-white “swoosh” was IndyCar driver Graham Rahal’s tease that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing acquired a new team sponsor in beverage giant Coca-Cola. Others took it to mean that Rahal was planning to do the Memorial Day Double and race in both the…
Keith McCarty, Motorsports Racing Division Manager for Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A., is retiring from his position after 44 years. He joined Carruthers and Bice on this episode of Off Track to talk about his incredible career in which he worked with legendary racers from Bob “Hurricane” Hannah to Josh “Hurricane” Hayes. We also asked him about his love of road…
On December 31, 2020, it will be the end of an era at Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A. On that day, Keith McCarty is retiring as Motorsports Racing Division Manager for Yamaha, just three days shy of his 44th anniversary with the tuning-forks company. It all started on January 3, 1977. That was McCarty’s first day at Yamaha as mechanic for…
Two-time MotoAmerica Liqui Moly Junior Cup Champion and 2020 MotoAmerica Twins Cup Champion Rocco Landers made his 600cc Supersport debut this past weekend at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in Desert Center, California, and it was a good one. Landers made his debut on Melissa Paris’ Yamaha YZF-R6, a motorcycle formerly raced by her husband, four-time AMA Superbike Champion Josh Hayes. The…
Four-time AMA Superbike Champion Josh Hayes is a busy man in the MotoAmerica paddock as he serves as a rider coach for Bobby Fong, Cameron Petersen, and others. In this episode of Off Track, Carruthers and Bice find out a little more about Hayes coaching techniques and are reminded that he has still not retired as a racer.
What a difference half a decade makes…or does it? With just one week to go before the start of MotoAmerica Superbikes at The Brickyard, it’s interesting to take note of what’s different, or not so different, in 2020 compared with 2015. In 2015, Monster Energy/Graves/Yamaha’s Cameron Beaubier earned the pole position in Superbike on a sunny Friday afternoon at The…
AMA Superbike racing has been held for the past 11 years in succession at New Jersey Motorsports Park with this weekend’s race marking the 13th AMA Superbike event at the facility in Millville. The discrepancy in those two numbers stems from the 2016 season when NJMP hosted two rounds of the MotoAmerica Series. That’s Mr. New Jersey to you: The…
Four-time AMA Superbike Champ Josh Hayes was back in the saddle when he filled in for injured rider Mathew Scholtz aboard the #11 Westby Racing Superbike at the Official Dunlop Preseason Test, and he debriefs us on how things went at Barber Motorsports Park.
The following is from Westby Racing… Despite the challenging weather conditions and the unfortunate fractured right clavicle that Mathew Scholtz suffered this past Sunday in a training crash aboard a motocross bike, the Westby Racing team made solid progress at the two-day MotoAmerica Dunlop Official Preseason Test held at Barber Motorsports Park on Tuesday and Wednesday. The first order of…
When four-time Superbike Champion Josh Hayes left Yamaha’s U.S. factory road racing team a couple of years ago, which made room for Garrett Gerloff to move up to MotoAmerica’s Superbike class, Hayes made it clear that he wasn’t retiring. And, the 44-year-old legend is continuing to stay true to his word. After competing aboard an MP13 Racing Yamaha YZF-R6 in…
After the revised version of the Yamaha YZF-R1 Superbike debuted in 2015, Josh Hayes’s chassis man Steve Rounds seemingly spent every spare moment of his time (at least while at the racetrack) working on the seat on Hayes’s #1 machine during the 2015 season. Shaving, gluing, and clamping down the neoprene on countless iterations of the seat, Rounds focused tirelessly…
Josh Hayes has won four AMA Superbike titles. Now he’s sharing his immense knowledge of the sport, and his training methods, with racers like Garrett Gerloff, Bobby Fong, Cameron Petersen, Cory Ventura and Hunter Dunham at his J4orce Training Camp in Southern California. Here’s a video from our visit to the Hayes Compound in Oceanside.
Ask any of the riders in the MotoAmerica Series which race they’d want to win if they had to name just one, and chances are the response would be the same: Laguna Seca. Or, more accurately, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has a history that runs deep, most notably when it comes to motorcycle racing. And with…
Yoshimura Suzuki’s Toni Elias lost a boatload of points when he crashed out of race two at Road America two weeks ago, but he almost made all of those back up today with a thrilling victory in race one of the Championship of Utah at the Utah Motorsports Campus. In a race that featured as many as eight riders in…
“If you want something to happen, sometimes you just have to will it to come true.” Those are the words of Melissa Paris, team owner of MP13 Racing as she announced that she and her husband Josh Hayes, the four-time AMA Superbike Champion, have secured the last-minute financial support they needed to compete at round four of the 2019 MotoAmerica…
It seems that the demise of middleweight motorcycle road racing has definitely been greatly exaggerated. As we head into round four of the 2019 MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North America Road Racing Championship, the entry list for the Supersport class is 32 riders strong and chock-full of talent. Along with current championship leader PJ Jacobsen, current second-place challenger Richie Escalante, 2018 championship…
Fast racetracks breed close races. And there are none faster on the MotoAmerica schedule than Road America. Thus, there is nowhere like the iconic racetrack in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where the difference between happiness and heartbreak is so minute. Just ask Cameron Beaubier and Roger Hayden – two riders on the opposite end of the Road America winning/losing spectrum. Since…
He’s back… four-time AMA Superbike Champion and former Yamaha factory rider Josh Hayes will compete in the two Supersport races this weekend at VIRginia International Raceway, the legendary racer riding the MP13 Racing Yamaha YZF-R6 that he raced in the Daytona 200. “After a successful Daytona 200, we got to thinking about the all-time AMA wins record, and it’s well…
“My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor… and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” Gladiator, Universal Pictures 2000 What do you do when you’re a four-time AMA Superbike Champion, a former Yamaha factory rider, and for the first time…
While we motorcyclists and motorcycle road racing fans in the Northern Hemisphere muddle through the winter months, occupying our time in the garage or bench racing with our two-wheel-obsessed cohorts, it’s midsummer on the continent of Australia, and smack-dab in the middle of the road racing season. The 26th International Island Classic takes place this weekend at Australia’s Phillip Island…
In this post-Halloween episode of “Off Track with Carruthers & Bice,” we’re treated with four-time AMA Superbike rider Josh Hayes as our guest. The “Mississippi Madman” shares his thoughts on his year-long hiatus from racing and if he’ll return to turning a wheel in anger in 2019, his role as a mentor for young riders, what he thinks of the…
Four-time AMA Superbike Josh Hayes has said, on many occasions, that he’ll stop racing when someone “pries his cold-dead fingers from the handlebars.” The Mississippi Madman got kind of a late start in motorcycle road racing – not getting involved until after he graduated from high school – and he was bound and determined to not have an early exit.…
Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A. (YMUS), has announced that two U.S. road racers will be attending this year’s Yamaha VR46 Master Camp that will take place in Tavullia, Italy, in July. 16-year-old Jackson Blackmon and 15-year-old Cory Ventura, both Graves/Yamaha-supported YZF-R3 riders in the 2018 MotoAmerica Junior Cup Championship, will make the trip to receive specialized training from Movistar Yamaha MotoGP…
