Hayes Wins 2012 AMA Superbike Championship with Record 14th Win

Monster Energy Graves Yamaha‘s Josh Hayes has clinched his third consecutive AMA Superbike title with his record 14th win of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

The win in the second race of the Miami round was the 31st of Hayes’ career. It followed a rare misstep in Race One which saw Hayes crashing after clipping a curb on the third lap. Hayes settled for a 12th-place finish, ending his record winning streak at 10 victories.

Hayes responded for Race 2 with a come-from-behind effort, erasing a 15-second deficit to take the win ahead of Attack Performance Kawasaki‘s Steve Rapp and Jordan Suzuki‘s Ben Bostrom.

“It’s been a pretty incredible year,” says Hayes. “Especially after last year, the way things have gone this year … this is the way you’d hope I could push things to. I don’t feel at a loss for motivation or anything; I want to win races. Championships are pretty cool and sometimes when you get a gap like we have it feels somewhat anticlimactic, but I still live for the individual victories. Every single race win feels so good. And if you get those the way that you want to, the championship kind of takes care of itself. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do that and we’re going to continue doing it for as long as we can into the future.”

The win gave Hayes 517 points on the season, 116 points ahead of Yoshimura Suzuki‘s Blake Young and 210 points ahead of his Graves Yamaha teammate Josh Herrin.

Hayes has a chance to further pad his record numbers at the season finale Oct. 5-7 at NOLA Motorsports Park in New Orleans.

[Source: AMA Pro Racing, Yamaha]

By Dennis Chung