News - May 16 Infineon Raceway
Kawasaki AMA Superbike Showdown
Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CARockstar Makita Suzuki’s Hayden Back on the
Podium at Infineon Superbike Race 1
Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden picked up his fifth AMA Superbike podium position of the 2009 season in the first race of the double-header weekend at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, on Saturday afternoon. The Kentucky native started the 22-lap race from the front row, thanks to a strong superpole showing. He ran up front and brought home second place. Rockstar Makita Suzuki teammate Mat Mladin started the weekend strong by taking his fifth (out of a possible five) pole position of the year. In the race, the six-time AMA Superbike Champion got a great start and was out front but struggled a bit and wound up finishing in fifth position. Finally, Rockstar Makita Suzuki rookie Blake Young opted to sit out this race weekend after injuring his hand at the previous round at Barber Motorsports Park. Young hopes to be back racing at the next event at Road America
in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
Tommy Hayden
“It feels good to get second place at Infineon. The last few races haven’t gone as well as the first few. Now I’m starting to feel like I’m getting back where I started the season at, and that feels good. The Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000 was working great out there, it was hot and greasy for everyone but I felt like we had a good set-up. I’m happy with the result. I think we’ll have to improve and go faster on Sunday if we want to get this kind of result, so we’ll make a plan and try to go a little bit faster.”
Mat Mladin
“Obviously, we’ve had better days. But, as I’ve said a few times, when you win as much as we have -- as a team and as I have personally -- there’s only one place to go if you have a bad day and you can’t go better
than a win. So, today we struggled a bit and that’s the way it goes. Congratulations to Josh (Hayes), who’s been working hard – good on him. They deserved it today.”
Blake Young
“I got injured at Barber and I got off my pain killers and finished up my antibiotics to make sure I didn’t get an infection. I got back on the bicycle and started training. My finger felt really good,
motion was coming back better and better every day. So I decided to come on out here and see what we could do because every day was getting so much better. Maybe we’d have a chance to ride the bike. But when I got to the track, I realized that if I tried to ride at this point I would just damage my hand. So we’re going to sit out this weekend and then go back to the doctor and keep it healthy and get it healed up for Elkhart Lake.”
Rockstar Makita Suzuki Factory Racing will race again today at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California.
