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September 4, 2008

Baldwin grad clinches AMA national championship

Marshall Duncan

Milledgeville native and Baldwin High graduate Aaron Yates clinched his fifth AMA Superstock national championship this past weekend for Michael Jordan Motor Sports Suzuki. While the season still has one race to go, Yates has enough points that no one can surpass him.

“It feels really good to clinch that early and get that over with before the season was finished. . That’s something that I was really trying to make happen. My team did really well to make that happen. They gave me a great bike to ride every weekend. I never had any problems at all.”

Yates’ season began back in March at Daytona Motor speedway. Since then, Yates has finished no worse than second in any of the 9 races he’s competed in to take his fifth overall AMA national championship.

Yates, who has been racing road bikes professionally since 1993, first got into the sport through motor cross racing.

“When I turned five, I got a bike for Christmas, and then as I grew up, I always had a bike for me to ride. When I turned 11 and around there, we decided to try some motor cross racing. Starting doing that and it just progressed. We moved on with bigger bikes and things.”

After hurting his knee and being away from the racing for awhile, Yates got a deal on road bike and decided to give racing a shot, something he won’t soon regret.

“Coming from racing dirt bikes, you’re used to the dirt bike bouncing around and all kinds of things like that,” explained Yates.

“The first time I rode a road bike, it was just so clean. There was no dust, it was clean it was smooth. You’re not looking for the ruts or the bumps or the burns in the corners. You’re just picking your line and flowing around. Just getting on the bike and hitting the gas where as on a motor bike you’re bouncing off this and that and jumps and hanging onto the handle bars.”

Since beginning his career, Yates has accumulated 46 AMA national victories spread out over various levels.

While most national championship winners are speechless and overcome by joy at the time of the event, Yates is a little more calm about the title.

“It’s a good one for my resume. I got a few wins this year and just been stacking up the wins. It says a lot for the team. We’ve accomplished a lot. We’re competing against some pretty good teams. We’ve achieved a lot, especially in the superbike class. It’s icing on the cake.”

When he’s not on the track, Yates is like any other husband and father taking care of his kids, doing laundry and other house hold activities. However, his nine year old son and six year old daughter already have motorcycles of their own.

“They enjoy it a lot. My boy’s on his second bike now and my little girl does a little bit of riding too.

It’s a family thing. It’s great to see them learn and have fun.”

With this most recent national title, Yates should not have a problem being asked to ride again next year and expects to ride for three or four more years. Once he retires from racing, Yates said that he has considered owning a team, but it would most likely be in the distant future to give him time to be with his wife and kids.

“I tossed around the idea[ of team ownership], I’m just trying to figure out which direction to go. It’s a lot of dedication and it’s a lot of time away from home and I don’t know that that’s the kind of adventure that I want to go off on. Maybe further down the way. I’ll probably have a pretty good little break in between doing that. We’ll see what happens.”

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