A few years ago in AMA Pro road racing, factory teams rarely tested components from two rival suppliers back-to-back in the public eye. These kinds of evaluations happened and quite often, but it usually happened long before the season started and at private tests, well out of sight of the media and public. By the time most of us saw the factory teams in action each pre-season all of the decisions on product suppliers were usually already made, and a top team switching between two components from rival suppliers during a race weekend was just crazy talk. So it was quite strange during AMA Pro Superbike qualifying Thursday at Daytona International Speedway when Tommy Hayden’s Rockstar Makita Suzuki crew removed the Ohlins shock from his GSX-R1000 and replaced it with a Penske damper. Not only was this unusual because it was something that never would have happened in the past, it was extraordinary because Rockstar Makita Suzuki has been with Ohlins, a worldwide leader in motorcycle road racing suspension, since 2009 and Penske has relative little experience at top-level motorcycle road racing. And if that wasn’t strange enough, Hayden turned his fastest qualifying time while using the Penske shock and plans to continue working with it Friday, when his teammate Blake Young will also start testing a Penske shock. “We planned to test with it at Daytona in January, but we didn’t a chance with all of the rain and delays,” Tommy Hayden told Roadracingworld.com. “We have something decent, that we know works, but we’re looking for any improvement we can get. The Ohlins works fine, but if we have the opportunity to look at something else, maybe learn something, maybe make some improvements then we’ve got to take a look at it.” Asked if he was going to stick with the Penske shock for the rest of the weekend, Hayden said, “The plan is fluid right now. We have some ideas, and depending on how those work out our plan will go from there. We have a plan to start tomorrow with a different variation of this [Penske] shock, and we’ll see where that leads us. But we still have old faithful [Ohlins] ready to go at any time.” This led to the question, is it conceivable that you may carry both the Ohlins and the Penske with you to try back-to-back at other races this season? Hayden deferred that question to Team Manager Peter Doyle, who said, “It’s just one component in the whole package. I believe we could go back and forth on race weekends. The final decision really comes down to the rider. If he comes in tomorrow and says, ‘I like that one. I want to use it.’ Then he can use it.”