Hacking wins the Laguna round of the Superstock championship on his way to becoming the champ image by tim huntington

All he had to do was sign a piece of paper and he would be a very rich man.

In late season 2006 Yamaha were offering their long-time franchise rider Jamie Hacking nearly everything he desired. A long-term contract, checks with lots of zeros, security and a familiar place to grow old in.

All he had to do was sign the piece of paper.

Jamie Hacking, infamous at one time for his roller-coaster results—his 2005/2006 seasons could not be described any better than by referencing an amusement park ride. Hacking was leading the Superstock championship in 2005 when he suffered a debilitating injury while riding bicycles with Ben Spies. Both of his elbows were seriously dislocated in a fall and Hacking had to undergo several painful surgeries and the requisite rehab in order to fix them. He sat on the couch for the latter half of the 2005 season.

British by birth and a Southerner by locale, Hacking stormed back in 2006, mounting a charge his native red-coats would be proud to call their own. He used Yamaha machinery to lead and eventually win both the 600 Supersport and 1000 Superstock championships this season—handing Yamaha a dream package in terms of marketing both their flagship sport bikes.

Possibly one of the worst-kept secrets in 2006 was that Yamaha would be back in the headline Superbike class in 2007 running at least two R1s in the what some might describe as The Only Class That Matters. Hacking, seemingly, had timed things well, his contract was up at the end of '06 and there was every reason in the world to believe he'd be on a Yamaha Superbike next season.

Every reason but one, actually.

That being while Hacking was injured and in the middle of a multi-year contract, Yamaha US had started putting plans into place that would prepare for a Superbike assault then two years away. They signed Eric Bostrom and Jason DiSalvo to multi-year contracts which presumably put them in Superbike in 2007.

Hacking was very much an unknown in 2005. The well-worn Career Results spreadsheet used by most team managers does not favor a 34-year old rider sitting at home with two savagely dislocated elbows.

No one could foresee the force of Hacking comeback at that point.

Hacking won Superstock and Supersport for Yamaha in 06 image by tim huntington

To understand this situation, one has to understand and simply accept the way that Yamaha as a company works. They are a gig-normous multi-national with millions flowing through their multi-faceted coffers every year. As with most enormous Japanese companies, they do long-term strategic planning on nearly all levels, from product to shipping to manpower to taxes. Long-term means five years out sometimes, seven years in others.

Racing is very much a part of Yamaha, but it adheres to exactly the same planning methodology as the rest of the company—long term plans are made, long term plans are rarely modified nine months from calendar launch. Valentino Rossi writes in his autobiography about driving the Yamaha Japan execs in charge of their MotoGP effort absolutely batshit with his tendency to leave everything to the last minute. Since he is Valentino Rossi, they try to placate him, but aren't too well acclimated at it because they honestly have not done so since King Kenny Roberts rode for them in the 1980s. It drove them nuts then, it drives them nuts now.

Long story short, some time ago a group of Yamaha execs in two different countries signed off on Yamaha running just two riders in US Superbike in 2007. Short of an Eddie Lawson comeback, there wasn't anything on this earth that was going to cause this to change.

Yamaha offered Jamie Hacking an enormous amount of money to stay and defend his championships. A huge amount of money. DuHamel-sized paychecks, if not more, and he'd never have to set boot in the blood-and-guts Superbike class to earn them.

If you're Hacking's business manager, concerned about his financial future, you tell him to sign that deal. Managers see things in black and white, and know that an extra, say, $700,000 now, on top of the $1.1 million he would have made anyway, can cancel out a lot of problems a decade after he's retired from racing.

Riders, however, see, they don't see things in black and white.

They do it because it is who they are: psycho-competitive two-wheeled madmen bent on winning. Five-time Daytona winner and former World Superbike champion Scott Russell once mused to me "Man, I don't even like motorcycles sometimes. I just like beating guys."

They see the world in "ridervision", which at times basically has no portal to reality—sometimes not even an ear canal-sized tunnel to reality. But, when your job is getting on a motorcycle and riding it so hard and so fast that when they put a passenger behind you at some PR function and you go maybe nine tenths for a half lap and that passenger gets off and quickly walks stiff-legged to the nearest object larger than himself because, truth be known, he wet his pants in fear, reality is something a rider just can't accept. Because to do your job as a rider much of the time you have to stare death in the face, which like it or not, is the reality.

Further reality: riders actually don't race for the money. The really good ones anyway, to them the money is, at first, the punch-line to a secret joke they seem to have put over on the universe. And they're going to pay me, too! The really good motorcycle racers don't do it for the money. Or the fame. Or the fans. They do it because it is who they are: psycho-competitive two-wheeled madmen bent on winning. Five-time Daytona winner and former World Superbike champion Scott Russell once mused to me "Man, I don't even like motorcycles sometimes. I just like beating guys."

Jamie Hacking is a really good motorcycle racer.

Ernest Hemingway spent much of his life in search of one true thing, one true sentence. If you want one true sentence about Jamie Hacking it is this: he doesn't particularly care for Jason DiSalvo. Don't get me wrong: if someone brought a military-spec flamethrower to the track and pointed it at Jason DiSalvo and turned him into something that looked like a member of the Fantastic Four, Jamie Hacking would try to save him. He would. But he would not run over to help save him, okay? He would walk over and try to save him. Slowly.

From Hacking's perspective, all the zeros on checks and all the security in a multi-year contract and all the friends he was going to be able to keep at Yamaha wasn't going to erase the one nano-second of pain he knew would be coming if he stayed at Yamaha and didn't race Superbike. At some point he was going to be standing in a pit lane somewhere, probably Daytona, and he would be finished riding the support classes for the day and Superbike were about to go out and Jason DiSalvo would jump on his R1, fire it up, and give Hacking a quick glance with that impish grin and then ride off. Afterwards, Hacking was going to have to walk back to his motorhome knowing DiSalvo was racing Superbike and he wasn't.

In "ridervision" life is unlivable under those conditions. You may as well be on fire. You may as well commence Sioux Indian death wailing and take a sharp meat cleaver and hack off both of your braking fingers just to confirm that life as you know it is over.

Meanwhile, Kawasaki knocked on the Hackings' motorhome door and had an open Superbike ride and a check with just as many zeros on it for him if he wanted them. Yes, he did. So Jamie Hacking left Yamaha, which was both stunning and completley understandable at the same time.

Inside the Hacking/Yamaha situation it's not as filled with angst and bad feelings as you might imagine. In fact, there is an bedrock of understanding between all parties. Hacking understands that the way Yamaha works he became a very successful odd-man out, that his double-championship success was really well-timed or very poorly timed, dependng on perspective. Yamaha understands that for Hacking, living every day after watching DiSalvo wheelie down the pitlane into Superbike practice would be a gray day indeed, barely tolerable, almost not worth living.

And Jason DiSalvo understands it ain't over. Not by a long shot.

He's just fine with that, too. Just fine.

Three months until Daytona.