Jamie Hacking hard on the gas coming out of a corner on his factory Monster Energy Kawasaki at Daytona in 2008. (Larry Lawrence photo)

At this moment he’s unemployed and sitting at home waiting for a baby to arrive and hopefully a phone call, but ever since he came into AMA road racing in 1997 Jamie Hacking has been perhaps the hardest charging road racer in America.

I vividly remember the first time I got the chance to watch Hacking race. It was 1997 at the season opener in Phoenix. He was racing for Robert Nutt’s Kinko’s Kawasaki squad and just blew everybody away by winning the pole for the 600 Supersport race. I mean this was when 600 Supersport was at its peak and factory and factory-supported teams were thick and here comes this kid from South Carolina fresh out of WERA and he comes in and nails the pole.

It got better. In the race he was about sixth in the lead group of riders and one lap he drafted on the outside and passed every one of them in a single swoop going into turn one. I think the group included riders like Pascal Picotte, Aaron Yates, Ben Bostrom, Steve Crevier, Andrew Stroud and of course the king of AMA Supersport– Miguel Duhamel and here this rookie passed them all together in a single unbelievable late-braking maneuver. My jaw dropped. To this day that was one of the most spectacular passes I’ve ever seen in my life.

I asked Jamie about the pass afterwards and he just smiled and said “Yeah, that was pretty crazy.” I’d say it was. In fact it was out and out insane, yet he pulled it off. No one would ever accuse Hacker of being short on nerves.