Hacking gets first Supersport win with Kawasaki

April 29, 2007

Chris Martin

Reigning Pro Honda Oils Supersport champion Jamie Hacking bounced back from his Barber Motorsports Park crash to win a dramatic Supersport final at California Speedway. The hard-fought victory was Hacking’s first with the Monster Energy Kawasaki team.

The race concluded the weekend’s activity, after being rescheduled to the end of the day to allow the Superbike final to make its live television window. The schedule change was forced due to an incident heavy string of events that saw the Supersport race face three red flags and four starts before it was finally completed.

Once truly underway, the race proved worth the wait, however. Barber Motorsports Park winner Josh Hayes and Team M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Michael Barnes disputed the lead, but all the while, Hacking was lurking behind, powering his way up from the outside the top ten.

The British-born star blasted into second on lap 10 of 17 and leveraged his ZX-6RR visibly superior speed and acceleration to eat up the ground separating him from the leading Erion Honda man.

Hacking drove right past Hayes’ CBR600RR on the front straight to take control of the race as they opened lap 15. Hayes made a valiant effort to come back through, particularly in a hair-raising slicing of lappers as they raced to the checkered flag, but it wasn’t enough.

The win was Hacking’s fourth at Fontana and his 20th all-time in the class, second most in AMA Supersport history.

After the race, Hacking said, “Luckily we made it through them with no big drama. No crashes, but it was very close there on the last lap diving in between those two guys.

“The race went fairly well for us. I had to start on the second row and work our way up and everybody kept dive-bombing on me on the first couple laps. Some of these guys haven’t figured it out yet. This is 600, all you’re doing is wasting time. This isn’t Superbike, you can’t square it up. All you’re doing is slowing down and letting the guys get away.

“The gap got really big for me at the beginning of the race. I finally got in there and set a pace. My Kawasaki is fast. I’m not going to lie; it’s the fastest bike out there right now. It’s nice to be sitting in that position and have a bike that’s running that well. I’ve sat in other people’s positions and it’s not nice.

“All we can do is win races and hopefully tighten this championship back up to where it needs to be and have a dogfight to the end.”

Hacking’s teammate, Roger Hayden, came home in third, surviving a mid-corner collision with polesitter Chaz Davies, who ran off the track after the contact before mounting a comeback to an eventual ninth-place result.

Attack Kawasaki’s Steve Rapp finished in fourth with early-leader Barnes right on his tail in fifth. Two-time class champ Tommy Hayden took sixth, followed by Barnes’ Team M4 EMGO Suzuki teammate, Geoff May and Matsushima Suzuki’s Danny Eslick.

Team Hunter’s Cory West closed out the Supersport race’s top 10.

Hayes’ second place breaks the tie for the points lead, bumping him up to 96, four in front of second-ranked Roger Hayden’s 92. Defending champ Hacking is now sixth at 70.