Two-time AMA Superbike champion Josh Hayes thought he and his wife Melissa Paris (an accomplished racer herself) were going to have a nice little vacation in Spain, with the added spice of being able to cut some laps on the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha YZR-M1 formerly ridden by Colin Edwards at the post-race tests at the Valencia circuit. The test was organized by Yamaha USA as part of a “thank you” for his latest AMA title, as well as his loyalty and professionalism for understanding the firm’s reasoning behind shutting down some overseas racing opportunities during the extended breaks in the AMA schedule. It would be “the perfect way to go about experiencing a MotoGP bike,” said Hayes back in early October. “The idea and possibility of just being able to go test it, season’s over, I don’t have aspirations of going to race MotoGP. It’s just an opportunity to go ride the machine, no pressure, have some fun. And see what it’s all about, see what I can learn from it and I’m excited for that opportunity.”
Hayes' scheduled ride on Colin...
Hayes' scheduled ride on Colin Edwards' Monster Tech 3 Yamaha M1 turned from a cool test ride experience to the opportunity of a lifetime.
Then Edwards suffered a severely dislocated shoulder in his crash at Sepang involving the late Marco Simoncelli and Valentino Rossi. When surgery was scheduled to repair damage to Edwards’ shoulder cartilage, forcing him to miss the season-ending race at Valencia, the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team had to find a last-minute replacement. Yamaha’s official test rider Katsuyuki Nakasuga was already filling in for the injured Jorge Lorenzo at Valencia, and there were some outside possibilities with some World Supersport and British Superbike riders. But then the thought must have struck them…Hayes is already coming to ride—why not let him race it?
Hayes was actually at the...
Hayes was actually at the top of the timesheets on Sunday morning warmup.
Then the whirlwind ensued. Getting the necessary approvals from the FIM/Dorna, rescheduling flights, getting leathers made. But Hayes made it to Valencia with everything in hand; and perhaps got a stroke of luck when both free practice sessions on Friday were run on a wet racetrack, meaning that instead of getting dive-bombed by the MotoGP regulars while he tried to get his head around a new racetrack, different motorcycle, and different tires, he could spend his first 90 minutes learning the track layout without too many distractions. In the afternoon practice session, Hayes ended up an amazing 10th on the timesheets. “I was careful all weekend because I knew if I fell down and scratched it up that was that much less track time I was going to get,” said Hayes. “So I was trying to sneak up on everything and try to be smart and do what I could.”
The Saturday morning free practice session before qualifying finally ended up with a dry racetrack, and the MotoGP regulars started getting down to business. Nevertheless, even though Hayes was at the bottom of the timesheets, he was less than a second behind teammate Cal Crutchlow, who’d been riding the bike all year. As the times dropped in qualifying on Saturday afternoon, Hayes fell a little farther back, but continued his measured and steady improvement; he was right behind factory test rider Nakasuga. “I didn’t like qualifying 16th, but I wasn’t that far off the pace considering I had 45 dry laps and they were in their final qualifying session of the season,” said Hayes. “They were all at the their very best and I was just figuring it out. I was only 1.6 (seconds) off Cal and 2.6 (seconds) off Ben and still learning. So I just enjoyed riding the bike, did the best I could.”
Sunday morning’s 20-minute warm-up practice session saw another wet racetrack. Just in case the race was run in the rain, Hayes made sure he pushed his limits—while still keeping the bike rubber-side down—to see how the bike reacted. Lo and behold, the Mississippi native found his name at the top of the MotoGP timesheet. “I was thinking that I would retire after this morning and not ride the race so I could go out on top,” joked Hayes.
The race itself was run in very dodgy conditions; earlier rain showers after the Moto2 race had wet the track, but not enough for full wet rain tires, and with the track drying somewhat, everyone opted for full slicks. The tricky conditions quickly caught out Alvaro Bautista, who touched the rear tire of Andrea Dovisioso heading into Turn One at the start and crashed, taking out both Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden (who suffered a fractured scaphoid bone in his wrist, putting him out of the two-day post-race 1000cc tests), and Randy De Puniet. Hayes managed to avoid the carnage, and soon set out to tackle the very difficult task of getting the Bridgestones up to temperature on a treacherous surface.
“It was just a pretty crazy weekend in general and the race was no different than the rest of it,” said Hayes. “It was a very difficult race, because it was pretty much raining the whole time the Moto2 bikes were off the track, so the track kinda had a sheen of water over it, but it wasn’t wet enough for wet tires. All I’ve been told is how you have to put a lot of force into the tires, get the heat to come up, make them work and I tried to do that. But it’s hard to do that when you’re tiptoeing around in the weather.”
Hayes ended up in a heated...
Hayes ended up in a heated dice with factory Yamaha test rider Katsuyuki Nakasuga for sixth place, with the Japanese rider prevailing.
Hayes soon found himself embroiled in a dice for sixth place with Nakasuga, and the two Yamaha pilots traded places a couple of times before the Japanese superbike regular began to inch away. “Found myself in a race with Nakasuga for a while there,” recalled Hayes. “Then as the tires were getting beat up and I was still a little unsure—still learning the electronics, still learning the tires, and still learning the race track, and what spots get slippery, what spots stay good—it was raining here and not over there, and moving around. I just kinda…towards the end of the race, I dropped off of his pace just a little bit, and I had a few guys come back to me. So I end up seventh, which really feels like 11th, because I think there were four guys that went down in the first turn that probably should’ve have been in front of me. What can I say? I’ll take it. I’m 19th in the championship. Hopper (John Hopkins) came to three of these things and I’m in front of him in the championship. I’m in good company.”
So what did Hayes think of the YZR-M1 compared to his R1 superbike? “Physically, I didn’t get that tired. The bike wasn’t that difficult physically. But the speed and some of the things about the chassis were definitely an adjustment. Man, this thing is so fast and not necessarily…in the lower gears, a lot of electronics kinda keeps it somewhat tame. Once you get through the front wheel on the ground and get the thing rolling and let it actually go through the rpm for two or three gears—this is a pretty short track, so it’s got short gearing so it’s tough to do—it was pretty amazing once you let the thing get going. I struggled even in fourth and fifth gear to keep the front wheel on the ground. It was a pretty exciting motorcycle.”
For a rider who brushed off any aspirations to race MotoGP before he got the call, Hayes suddenly found his brief taste of the MotoGP elixir a little bit addictive. “I did what I could,” related Hayes. “I’m so thirsty for more information, which just requires me to have more time. And, man I wish I had more. I [got] to ride more on Tuesday, but that’s a pretty far cry from getting to race the thing for a while and getting to understand how they work.
“I had fun. I hope I did a good job for those guys. And I think my goal is if I did good enough for those guys that they would call me and ask me to come back at some point. That would be awesome.”