Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Josh Hayes looked in pain as he limped through the Daytona paddock Wednesday favoring his broken left heel, which is squeezed into a size 11 boot while his right foot wears his normal size 9. The 2003 AMA Superstock Champion says, other than missing a lot of shifts, he is more comfortable on his Attack Kawasaki ZX-10R Superstock and Superbike machines than he is walking but is definitely not 100 percent physically.

Hayes, who has not ridden a road racer since December, qualified ninth in Superstock Wednesday with a 1:50.263 and oddly went much slower in Superbike qualifying with a 13th-fastest 1:53.770.

Hayes’ ZX-10R Superbike is equipped with a race-kit swingarm, a hand-built 24-liter endurance fuel tank with dry-break quick-fill fittings, big forks and brakes.

After evaluating a number of different forks in winter testing, American Honda has settled on using Showa kit forks on the CBR600RR Formula Xtreme bikes of Miguel Duhamel and Ben Bostrom. The forks’ sliders have a green, anti-stiction coating team members called “Friction Down,” which was first developed and used on Honda’s off-road racers.

Bostrom says riding the “little” CBR600RR FX is weird on the “big,” 16.5-inch Daytona-spec Superbike slicks. He said the tire is so big he can feel it dragging on the engine and yet so hard that it still spins going out onto the banking. This, says Bostrom, is why the Supersport bikes are turning faster lap times than the Formula Xtreme machines, because the Supersport bikes have more grip and less rotating mass with their 17-inch DOT-labeled tires.

Erion Honda has had some troubles with its Formula Xtreme CBR600RRs at Daytona. Alex Gobert lost half of his Wednesday morning practice session to a problem with his rear brake, and Jake Zemke’s bike suffered a major misfire on the first lap of qualifying, forcing him to switch to a community back-up bike that he had never ridden in order to register a lap time and qualify for the race.

Pascal Picotte is racing in all four classes at Daytona – Supersport, Superstockk, Formula Xtreme and Superbike – on basically Supersport-spec Yamaha YZF-R6s and YZF-R1s. While he is very competitive in Supersport, Picotte says his R6 doesn’t have enough power to stay in the draft of the factory Honda CBR600RRs in the Formula Xtreme race.

Picotte was quick to point out that Wednesday was the first day his Yamahas had been on a racetrack ever and the first time he had been on track in several months.

Team Valvoline EMGO Suzuki’s Steve Rapp qualified 18th in Superstock with a 1:51.697, far from where he wanted to be. Rapp said he only did a few laps before fitting his Michelin qualifying tire and doing a low-1:50, but he missed turn one at the completion of that fast lap and AMA Pro Racing disallowed it.

No Limit Suzuki’s Jason Pridmore, however, was very happy with his Superstock qualifying effort, eighth with a 1:50.181. Pridmore pointed out that his 2003 Superbike qualifying time was a 1:50.383, which was good enough for 10th on that grid.

Everything was going well for Yoshimura Suzuki’s Aaron Yates in Wednesday afternoon’s Superbike qualifying session, that is until he hit the large pylon marking the edge of the track at the exit of the chicane. “I thought I broke my damn arm!” said Yates.

The pain was so great it sapped the strength from Yates’ arm, and he said he was barely able to hold on to the handlebar, especially braking into left-hand turns like turns one, six and the entrance to the chicane. So Yates was very surprised when the next lap was his fastest, a 1:48.478. “I felt like I was going so slow on that lap,” said Yates.