Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127565
GR RACE AMAICCS 750cc Su ers or! Series: Round 2 DAD ~ Britt Turkington dominated the 7SOcc Superspoit final at Daytona International Speedway, but lapped traffic slowed him near the end and he only won by 1.557 seconds. Turkington nails down first-ever National win By Paul Carruthers Photos by Henny Ray Abrams DAYTONA BEAQI, FL, MAR 5 exan Britt Turkington ended a twoyear winless drought for Suzuki in the 750cc Supersport final at Daytona International Speedway and in the process gave himself his first-ever win at an AMA National. The Yoshimura Suzuki rider led the IS-lap, 53.4-mile race from start to finish, holding off a battle that went to the wire between second and third place finishers Takahiro Sohwa and Gerald Rothman Jr. Dave Sadowski, a former Daytona 200 winner and the victor in the opening round of the series at Phoenix International Raceway, was also in the group fighting for second, but he crashed on the 14th lap. Class Racing's Jason Pridmore and Valvoline T 24 Suzuki's Kurt Hall rounded out the top five finishers. The last rider to win a 750cc Supersport race on a Suzuki was Miguel DuHamel at Road Atlanta in 1990; the last time a Suzuki won the class at Daytona was in 1989 when Jamie James took the win that would help vault him to the series championship that year. Since 1989, Kawasaki has dominated the class with Scott Russell winning the last three 750cc Supersport Championships. In addition to winning the race, Turkington also took ove~ the championship points lead. The Texan leads Pridmore, 65-60, after two rounds. Rothman is third with 54 points with Sohwa and Chuck Graves rounding out the top five with 53 and 51 points, respectively. The 48-rider field entered turn· one with Turkington leading the way. Sadowski was in tow with Yoshimura Suzuki fill-in rider Rothman and Muzzy Kawasaki's Sohwa tucked in behind. Those three quickly displaced themselves from the rest of the field, but they were also losing touch with Turkington. By the fifth lap, Turkington led by 4.3 seconds; after seven laps he led by 5.5 seconds; and he would stretch that lead to over six seconds by the ninth lap. All that changed, though, when Turkington started to encounter lapped traffic on laps 10 and 11. "I guess I wasn't as aggressive as the other guys, who would push people right off the track," Turkington said later. "It got kind of close there at the end. I guess I should get a little more aggro through the infield with those guys. There were a couple times when I almost had to stop because of lapped guys. Then one time there was a waving yellow and I didn't want to chance passing them and getting a lap penalty for doing that. I had to kind of play my pit board." The lead shrunk to three seconds on the 12th lap and to 1.4 seconds on the final go-around. At .the finish line, Turkington was just 1.557 seconds clear of the race for second. That battle went to the finish line with Sadowski and Sohwa taking turns