My grandfather was a soldier in the US 3rd Army during World War II. For years he has had nightmares from a moment during the war when a German grenade landed in a fox hole with him. Regularly wakes up remembering that moment of terror that came with knowing it was about to blow up while he scrambled to escape. Well, while the severity of the situation is completely different, I think that Attack Kawasaki’s Josh Hayes may be having a bit of that stomach wrenching and cold sweets each morning before he shows up at the AMA races these days.

Josh is a fantastic rider, in my opinion he is probably the most underrated rider in the 2005 AMA paddock, and he seems to be a genuinely good guy. His performance last season aboard the then-new ZX-10R with the barely factory supported Attack Kawasaki squad was amazing and he finished the season in eighth place as the leading privateer. He made waves at some of the races by leading practice sessions and out qualifying factory bikes at some events including an amazing practice session at horsepower hungry Brainerd. This season it looked he would have a chance to improve on that by getting more factory support for the Richard Stamboli run team, along with the advances that can be made to a bike in its second model year of being raced.

Unfortunately, this season Josh has been sitting on top of a grenade at every race. His start to the season in the AMA Superbike race at Daytona was short indeed as his ZX-10R went bang on the first lap. Disappointing to say the least since the likable rider from Mississippi ran some credible times in practice and qualifying. Even his one-off ride in the Daytona 200 on a Attack ZX-6RR started off with a front row qualifying position but ended just a few laps later with a smoking motor. Just to show this wasn’t a one off occurrence, the Superbike spec Kawasaki has since retired at both Barber and Fontana. Even Hayes’ teammate hasn’t been immune to this explosive trend as his Daytona 200 ended on lap one due to a mechanical failure.

Clearly, the team has gone one step too far in their effort to get competitive power out of their Superbike and Formula Xtreme bikes. The only reason that Attack Performance goes racing is for the marketing for their performance parts. Their current results aren’t going to be doing much to drive customers to their sales counter, so I’m sure they’ll be working overtime to turn this thing around.

As I’ve said in other blog postings, I’m a sucker for the underdog, especially when the underdog is such a genuinely nice guy. I’d like nothing more than to see some of the AMA Superbike egos get popped by Josh and his non-factory Kawasaki. Unfortunately, they’ll have to make the ZX-10R less of a time bomb before that is going to happen. In the meantime, Josh will have to dig in a little deeper in his fox hole and try to keep that acid in the pit of his stomach under control with a little Pepto.

[image from the Attack Performance web site.]