Photo by Brian J. Nelson
As an undercard to the iconic Daytona 200, three of MotoAmerica’s season championships kicked off at Daytona international Speedway, with the Mission King Of The Baggers Championship having two feature races. Baggers on the banking is a sight to see, and the fans enjoyed every lap of the race class that has become an international phenomenon.
Saturday’s Daytona Bike Week-concluding Mission King Of The Baggers race two was, in many ways, a carbon copy of Friday’s KOTB race one. The podium for both races was exactly the same, with Harley-Davidson Factory Racing’s Kyle Wyman getting the double win on the high banks. For Wyman, it was his 13thand 14th wins in the class and the 19th and 20th victories of his AMA/MotoAmerica racing career.
S&S/Indian Motorcycle’s Troy Herfoss, the three-time Australian Superbike rider making his debut in MotoAmerica and at Daytona, once again looked like he was headed for the win just like on Friday, but a slight mistake by him enabled Wyman to close the gap and take the checkered flag by .137 of a second.
With Herfoss finishing second for the second day in a row, Wyman’s teammate James Rispoli made it onto the podium in third just like he did on Friday.
In the post-race press conference, Wyman didn’t really think Saturday’s race two was a carbon copy of race one even though the podiums were the same.
“It was definitely a different scenario than yesterday.” Wyman said. “Now that I play it back in my mind, I do see that he got in there way deep and you had to take all of that second curb. So, yeah. That makes a lot more sense to me of why. It felt the same as yesterday to me, except I was way further back approaching it at Mach whatever, because I was just trying to make sure I could sniff the draft. I had a problem in the second-to-last lap. I lost a quick shifter, so I was scrambling trying to shift the thing. It’s not an easy bike to shift, even with a quick shifter, so I had to gather it up and that’s the exact time that Troy put his head down. So, he built, like, a second-and-a-half gap, maybe more. On the last lap, I think I was taking chunks out of that in the infield. I think I ran a pretty good infield split, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to get there, even to have a sniff of the draft. Then the next thing I know, I’m going through the dirt again in the same spot as we did yesterday. Just hoping and praying again I’m going to get to the line first. Threw a little juke off NASCAR 4 and tried to shake him off, and he held on.”
BellissiMoto Twins Cup – Rodio, Again
It seems pretty safe to say that Gus Rodio knows how to win races at Daytona International Speedway. After taking the victory in Twins Cup race one last year, the Rodio Racing – Powered by Robem Engineering Aprilia rider went one better and did the double this year, winning Friday’s BellissiMoto Twins Cup race one and finishing out his Daytona event with a win in Saturday’s race two.
Rodio won each of the two races by more than 11 seconds. On Saturday, second place went to Rocco Landers aboard the brand-new RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Suzuki GSX-8R and the third-place finisher was Rodio’s teammate Alessandro Di Mario, the 15-year-old rider recording the second MotoAmerica podium result of his young career.
“I did go, I think, three-tenths faster today than the race yesterday,” Rodio said, “Dom (Doyle) got me off the line and led the first full lap. So, I knew I really had to put my head down for that following lap, just because I needed to do double the work now to get myself in front and then to pull at least. I think I needed to pull six-tenths on him to break the draft, around five or six tenths. So, I got that done in the infield and then from there on, it was just stack time, stack time every single lap and hit all your marks. I was just having fun. That’s really it.
“That was a perfect weekend. Led every session and I think led every session by at least four tenths. So, we came in here with our head down and we knew what we had to do. I did re-break my track record in warmup this morning on the race tires from yesterday. So, I was super happy with that. I like Daytona. It’s really cool here. We’ll see what happens next year.”
Mission Super Hooligan National Championship – West Gets It Done
Saddlemen/Harley-Davidson’s Cory West came close to getting revenge yesterday for his DQ from last year’s Mission Super Hooligan National Championship with his third-place finish in race one. Today, he got full revenge, giving the Harley-Davidson Pan America its first-ever victory while leading a Harley sweep of the podium.
It was not only his first Super Hooligan win but his first win of any kind in the MotoAmerica Championship.
West came out the best of a six-rider scrap at the front and it came down to the usual Daytona drafting war. That war went to West by a scant .020 of a second over his Saddlemen/Harley-Davidson teammate Jake Lewis and .060 of a second ahead of Kyle Wyman Racing Harley-Davidson’s Cody Wyman.
Then came the two S&S/Indian Motorcycle FTR1200 who finished first and second in Friday’s race one – Tyler O’Hara and Troy Herfoss – with the third Saddlemen Harley right behind. The top six crossed the finish line separated by just .155 of a second.
Those six were in a class by themselves with Roland Sands Design’s Hawk Mazzotta the best of the rest and 16.4 seconds behind.
“Yesterday was such a scramble that today I kind of got to just play the game,” West said. “Started decent, but just kind of got swamped at the beginning and found myself back in fifth or sixth or something. I just knew I needed to just hold the draft and hang out for a little bit, let a few laps wind down. I think the board was saying three laps to go when I finally got a really good draft, and I came around the outside of everybody going into turn one. It’s a move that I’ve done a long time ago in the 200 on 600s, and it still works. It got me up to the front and then I was just kind of trying to chill in the infield. If I was ahead of the Indians, I knew that it would be good to just kind of slow the pace down in the infield because they were good there. A couple guys drafted me as the race went on, but Cody (Wyman) was just making a push at the front. I knew that we kind of had to keep tabs on him, because he just looked like he wanted to go. So, coming into the last lap, he was leading. I was running second. I followed him through the infield, but I wanted to try to keep a gap between me and him so that I could get that run if I got the draft. If I was too close, I’d pull up beside him and then we would just do this drag race, side by side, looking at each other like, ‘Well, didn’t plan that out very good.’ So, that last lap, drafting him down into the chicane, I knew I didn’t want to lead it. I’ve done that too many times. His brother, Travis (Wyman), he came by me on the brakes. I’m like, ‘well, if one draft is good, maybe two drafts is even better.’ So, I just really tried to hit the brakes and square the chicane up and get a really good drive out of there. Made sure I hit all my shifts perfect and got a good draft off of Travis. As Cody started dropping down the bank, I was getting a little side draft off of Travis. I was like, “Man, I don’t know if this is going to work.’ Then just perfect timing. Cody kind of started drifting up. It just left Travis with no draft, and it gave me the perfect draft. I was just, ‘Come on, baby. Come on, baby. Come on, baby. Bring it to the stripe.’“
