September 03, 2006
Chris MartinUPDATED!
Graves Yamaha’s Jamie Hacking assured himself a place in AMA history on Sunday afternoon at Road Atlanta, securing his second title of 2006 before the series even heads to Mid-Ohio for the season finale. And the British-born star did so in fine style, registering a wire-to-wire triumph in the Repsol Superstock race aboard his YZF R1 to claim his sixth win in the class this season and his twelfth overall with three more races yet to run.
Starting from the second spot on the grid, Hacking powered to the holeshot and dropped into Turn 1 just in front of his pole-setting teammate, Eric Bostrom. The Californian sat on the rear wheel of Hacking’s machine throughout the 15-lap main but never positioned himself to make a serious challenge for the win.
The British (and this weekend, Georgia) Bulldog will be able to soak up the season finale completely free of pressure. There’s little left to be done other than to underline his season of dominance in which he’s yet to finish lower than second in any given race.
Hacking is only the second man ever to win both classes. Doug Polen was the first, way back in 1988.
An almost disbelieving Hacking said, “I don’t even know what to say. It hasn’t been done in twenty years and it could be another twenty years (before it happens again). To take two completely different motorcycles like that, different ccs, weight differences, brake markers, acceleration… it’s really hard to do. I just shows how well I’ve ridden, and it shows how well my guys have prepared my bikes to make the switchover as easy as possible. Yamaha has put us in a position to be the top of the class in both classes.”
Whether or not Bostrom might have been able to pull off the win if he wasn’t thinking of his teammate’s title hopes will probably never be known, although the Californian gave Hacking his due after the race.
After finishing 0.225 seconds short of the win, Bostrom said, “Jamie’s pace from the start of the race was really quick. I knew if I made a pass I could not have improved the pace at all. We were running as good as we could and the guys behind were doing a good job hanging on. I didn’t even expect the pace to be as good as it was. Jamie was doing a terrific job up front. I know that if need be, he probably could have stepped it up a little bit and I feel that I could have too, but we just wanted to kind of playing it safe. I’m glad we got through lapped traffic okay and I didn’t want to do anything upset Jamie’s ride for the championship. And he set the pace the whole race and the whole year. It was a great performance by him all season.
“There were no team orders but you know what the right thing to do is. I think if the situation was reversed, Jamie would have done the same thing for me.”
A rotating trio, consisting of third Yamaha man Jason DiSalvo, Erion Honda’s Josh Hayes, and Jordan Suzuki’s Steve Rapp, took turns pushing the leaders when not battling each other for the final step on the podium.
The New Yorker put in a late charge to dispatch of his more experienced rivals and complete the Yamaha 1-2-3 podium sweep, while Hayes and Rapp rounded out the top five.
Afterwards, DiSalvo remarked, “It took me a couple laps to learn the tires. We were out on a tire that we had run before but never in these conditions. It took me a couple laps to get going and it was tough going at the beginning. I was watching the lead pack kind of slip away I was like, ‘Oh man, not again.’ But I got going around lap 4 or 5 and closed right in on Josh and Rapp.
“Josh got around Rapp and checked out… With three laps to go he was about a second-and-a-half ahead of me so I had to put my head down and I caught him. It was almost like as soon as I got right up to him he just stopped… I kept my head down and got passed him and pulled like a second in a lap. From there I had my eye set on the leaders. I noticed those guys kind of slowed down on the last lap and I kind of caught up to them. I made a little mistake actually -- I wanted to get as close to them as I could for the photo op with all three Yamahas at the line.
“It was a great race. It was good to come from back in the pack to kind of work my way up and fight for it.”
Outgoing Superstock champ Aaron Yates was never in contention for the podium while dealing with his injured shoulder suffered in a Friday fall. He came home behind Rapp’s Jordan Suzuki teammate, Jacob Holden, to claim seventh.
Hayes’ Erion Honda teammate, Aaron Gobert ran a relatively lonely race to eighth while local favorite Geoff May faded to ninth on the Team M4 EMGO Suzuki, one spot in front of Attack Kawasaki’s Damon Buckmaster.
