Jordan Suzuki's Aaron Yates (Photo: Brian J Nelson) » More Photos

Yates Heads Jordan Suzuki Qualifying 1-2

The season's four AMA Superstock race winners -- the same four men that rank 1-4 in the championships standings -- will line up on the front row of the grid for Sunday's 16-lap race at Mid-Ohio.

Jordan Suzuki's Aaron Yates added a point to his title advantage by securing the pole, out-pacing teammate Geoff May, Corona Honda's Jake Holden, and Team M4 EMGO Suzuki's Blake Young.

Yates, who has finished first or second in each race this season, is hoping to score his third victory of the season tomorrow.

The Georgian said, "Qualifying went pretty good. We came out with the pole and got the extra point. We made just a very small change from practice this morning and wanted to try to get the bike to turn around better and I think it worked out a little bit.

"I've been kind of concerned about my teammate here. He's been riding a lot out there and really has his bike dialed in. He's been going fast in Superbike qualifying and figured he'd be the man to beat. I went out there with my old leathers on and was ready to throw it down if I had to. We put some good tires in and went out there and went fast. I thought they said we had two of them but I came in and didn't have anymore so I went back out on the thing and just kept going and was going pretty quick. I was pretty happy with it. The Jordan Suzuki is going good and tomorrow is going to be a good race."

May made things a bit easier on Yates after getting caught out during the session. He explained, "It was going pretty good until I threw it out in the gravel trap. We came in and put on one of the softer tires which we didn't know if we were going to be able to race on or not. We don't have qualifiers here.

"I just lost the front coming down off the hill and into the sharp right. I think I over-taxed the front just trying too hard and bottomed it out. I tucked the front and messed the bike up pretty good. I was able to ride it back even though it didn't have a footpeg and I jumped on my backup bike and it felt a little bit different. I just went as hard as I could and thought, 'well, if I throw this one down too, oh well, I've got to get up there.' I ended up doing a little bit faster time and Aaron still got us, but I think we're looking really good for the race and we've got a really good race set-up.

Double '08 race winner Holden remarked, "Qualifying was all right. I've only been practicing in Superstock practice so we haven't really gotten any practice in the heat except for Thursday. We were trying some new things and we tested out some tires, which worked pretty good. The best I could clip off were some '25.7s. I was trying everything I could do get down there. I guess third is not last but we'll be trying to get up there in the race."

Fourth qualifier Young commented, "We were just trying a bunch of different suspension changes all through practice and we got something pretty good for qualifying we thought. I just went out there and started off on some race tires and tried to put in a pretty good pace and see how my tires would last which was pretty good. I came in and tried to put a little softer rubber on it and tried to go a little harder out there. I think we did pretty good -- we went the fastest we've gone all weekend. I think we've got a little bit more. We definitely learned a lot during qualifying and have a pretty good set-up for the race I think."

The second row will consist of Canadian Chris Peris, Spanish National Championship regular Kenny Noyes, Alaskan Ben Thompson, and veteran pilot Scott Jensen.