ARAI HELMETS DOMINATE 2010 AMA PRO ROAD RACING CHAMPIONSHIPS Claim top two positions in three championships, Top four spots in another (Daytona Beach, FL) Arai Helmets, a perennial force in virtually every form of motorsports competition from bikes to Formula-1, has dominated the 2010 AMA Pro Road Racing championship. Arai racers captured four of the five national championships: American SuperBike, Daytona SportBike, SuperSport East, and the inaugural XR-1200 series. More than “only” winning the championships, however, the Arai riders captured both of the top positions in three of the classes, the top four in another, and finished second in the only class not won. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. In the National Guard SuperBike class, Team Graves Yamaha’s Josh Hayes edged Rockstar Makita Suzuki’s Tommy Hayden at the last round in one of the two hotly-contested class championships that saw Arai win 15 of the 19 races-seven by Hayes, five by Hayden. The other three wins came from longtime Arai rider, and Hayden teammate, Blake Young, who finished sixth in the points. It was Hayes’s first Superbike crown, Arai’s first since Nicky Hayden’s 2002 win, and the first for Yamaha in a decade. The 2010 Daytona SportBike class was another barn burner, the points lead swapping back and forth on almost a race-by-race basis, and the championship again not being decided until the last round. In the end, after Arai riders took 13 of the season’s 18 races (with Bobby Fong winning his first-ever Daytona SportBike final), it was Team M4 Monster Energy Suzuki’s standout Martin Cardenas by just eight points over GEICO Powersports RMR Suzuki’s Danny Eslick. They gave Arai its second one-two championship finish. The most notable achievement in the 2010 SuperSport series was the first-ever AMA Pro national road race win by a woman. Arai-sponsored 16-year-old Elena Myers did it on her Lucas Oil RMR Roadracingworld.com Suzuki GSX-R600 at Infineon Raceway on May 15th, on her way to second place in the SuperSport West class championship. In the SuperSport East series, Arai’s young guns owned the top four championship positions. J.D. Beach on his Rockwall Performance Yamaha won eight of the eleven races he contested on his way to the championship. Huntley Nash was second and had three victories, Tomas Puerta third, and Cameron Beaubier fourth. Finally, the inaugural running of the new Vance & Hines XR-1200 class turned out to be another Arai showcase, as Danny Eslick and Travis Wyman took the championship and second place respectively in the shortened series.