Josh Hayes Fires Opening Salvo to Win Provisional Pole For AMA Superbike VIR Suzuki White Lightning Nationals

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Josh Hayes brings it out of turn eight at Road America during the running of the AMA Repsol Superstock final in June of 2004. Hayes went on to finish second on the day to eventual winner Tommy Hayden, and finished out the season in the 8th spot on the Attack/Kawasaki Motors/Dunlop-sponsored ZX10R. He was the '03 AMA Superstock Champion and won two races in route to claiming the crown, and is also a former 2-Time AMA Formula Extreme Champion, winning the crowns for Erion's Honda Racing in '06-'07, topping the podium in 10 races along the way.
If he keeps up the fashion and form he has shown this year and last in the premier AMA Superbike Series, he could very well be adding that crown to his title mantle as well. With three rounds and six races left in the season including VIR this weekend, it's definitely show or go time.
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Josh Hayes, riding the #4 Graves Motorsports Yamaha YZF-R1, fired the opening shot this afternoon at Virginia International Raceway in taking the provisional pole for this weekend's doubleheader round of the AMA Superbike Suzuki White Lightning Nationals. Fending off attacks from Ben Bostrom on the Pat Clark Motorsports Yamaha R-1 during qualifying, Josh put his head down to top the leaderboard for the afternoon by .492 seconds over BBoz#155. Tommy Hayden on the Yoshimura Rockstar Makita Suzuki GSX-R1000 rounded out the top three just .614 seconds adrift of provisional pole sitter Hayes.

Of interest to start off the weekend was Geoff May again riding the Erik Buell Racing 1125R for the team who qualified 5th on the provisional grid just 1.017 seconds arrears of Hayes. Quite an accomplishment for this young team considering the level of talent they placed ahead of going into tomorrow's second round qualifying at 9:30 EDT. And Aaron Yates put it in the 14th spot on the grid in the provisional round this afternoon in his return to the track after is late March crash at Fontana. Look for Aaron to up the pace as he gets re-introduced to the bike as well as once his leg gets stronger. The first of two races on the weekend in the AMA Superbike premier class rolls off tomorrow afternoon at 3:15 EDT.

You can check out the overall results right here thanks to AMA Pro Road Racing, and below that is the link for AMA Live Timing and Scoring to follow along for the rest of the weekend.
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AMA Pro Road Racing Suzuki White Lightning Nationals Superbike round one qualifying results from VIR:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/events/results.cfm?year=2010&eid=2010011040&discipline=RR&class=SB&type=Q&rnum=1&class_sort=all -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMA Live Timing and Scoring for VIR:

http://laptraxtg.racersites-cluster.com/LapTraxTG/AMA/livescoring.html?LAPTRAXID=2010011040
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AMA Superbike VIR round event info:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/events/event.cfm?eid=2010011040
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