MotoAmerica/Paul Carruthers

Yoshimura Suzuki’s Roger Hayden turned the tables on the competition during the final day of the Dunlop Preseason Test at Circuit of The Americas, the Kentuckian clicking off a 2:08.305 late in the last session of day two to take the top spot. The top men all did their times on Wednesday afternoon using the latest generation of Dunlop qualifying tires.

Hayden was .127 of a second better than his teammate Toni Elias, the Spaniard having logged the best Motul Superbike class time yesterday. Third quickest, and the final rider to break into the 2:08s, was two-time defending MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Cameron Beaubier. Beaubier was a tick over half a second off Hayden’s best.

  @rogerhayden95 and @tonielias24 turned the top two fastest lap times today in day two of the @MotoAmerica @RideDunlop preseason test at @cota_official raceway! @yoshimurasuzukiracing #MotoAmerica A post shared by Suzuki (@suzukicycles) on Mar 29, 2017 at 4:16pm PDT

“That felt good that last session,” Hayden said. “Not just the qualifier, but with the softer race tire I did a bunch of 2:09s there so I was really excited about that. I was actually going to try to keep trying to go and see how many low 9s I could do, but the boys wanted me to come in and try the qualifiers. That’s always fun, the qualifiers, having so much grip and going for it one lap. Overall, I’m really happy. We got through a lot of stuff and being fast from the get-go helps a lot. We kinda hit a little bit of a wall yesterday afternoon and this morning we got stuck at a lap time and then this afternoon we started making steps again. We lost a session due to weather and another with an accident, but we leave here with a lot of information. We need to improve in some areas and we still have a long ways to go, but I’m ready to get this season going.”

Quicksilver/Latus Motors Kawasaki’s Bobby Fong was the fastest of the Superstock 1000 riders and was up amongst the Superbikes on his Kawasaki ZX-10R. Fong won both Superstock 1000 races at COTA a year ago. Sixth fastest was Millennium Technologies/Lucas Oil/KWR’s Kyle Wyman, the team owner/racer lapping at 2:10.521 to best Wheels In Motion/Western Services/Meen Yamaha’s Josh Herrin. 

Garrett Gerloff was again the fastest of the Supersport racers, the Monster Energy/Yamalube/Y.E.S./Graves Yamaha rider stepping up big on day two to slice 1.4 seconds off his best from yesterday. Gerloff lapped at 2:11.728, which was .271 of a second under his pole position time from last year’s Supersport race at COTA.

“It was a good day,” Gerloff said. “We figured out some things with this new bike. Even though there are some things that are similar to last year, it is a new bike and we have to find different settings for the tracks we go to. The tracks we have been testing on are a lot more flowing and fast and not a lot of hard braking compared to this track where it doesn’t flow very well and there’s a lot of hard braking. They demand two different setups and we struggled a bit with that yesterday. Today, with the better track conditions and everything, we were able to figure out some things that we couldn’t yesterday with the wind. Everything is feeling good and ready for the race in three weeks.”

Day Two Lap Times

Supersport

1. Garrett Gerloff (Yamaha) 2:11.728
2. Valentin Debise (Suzuki) 2:12.386
3. JD Beach (Yamaha) 2:12.402
4. Daytona Anderson (Yamaha) 2:15.273
5. Brandon Paasch (Suzuki) 2:15.848
6. Nick McFadden (Suzuki) 2:16.153
7. Lucas Silva (Yamaha) 2:17.183
8. Brandon Cleland (Suzuki) 2:17.872
9. JC Camacho (Yamaha) 2:18.961
10. Caroline Olsen (Yamaha) 2:19.227

Superbike

1. Roger Hayden (Suzuki) 2:08.305
2. Toni Elias (Suzuki) 2:08.432
3. Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha) 2:08.827
4. Josh Hayes (Yamaha) 2:09.696
5. Bobby Fong (Kawasaki) 2:09.745
6. Kyle Wyman (Yamaha) 2:10.521
7. Josh Herrin (Yamaha) 2:10.627
8. Mathew Scholtz (Yamaha) 2:10.977
9. Jake Gagne (Honda) 2:11.122
10. Cameron Petersen (Kawasaki) 2:11.506