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Formula USAILockhart-Phillips Unlimited Superbike Series Round 1 : Daytona International Speedway right away because it would have been an advantage for me." Instead, the second leg never happened. The first leg was the sixth race on a 13-race card; the second leg was the 11 tho In between there was a 250cc race, the Buell Lightning, and the 125cc Grand Prix. It was the tiddlers who would screw up the schedule and, eventually, force the cancellation of the second leg. On the first lap of the 125cc race, run on a wet track under cloudy skies, there was a crash in turn one and a more serious one in the chicane. After an extended delay, a second start was attempted. That try also made it to the exit of the chicane before being red-flagged. By the time the third try was flagged off it was over an hour and 35 minutes after the first start, and that one lasted until the first tum where Samantha Cotter crashed. The plug was mercifully pulled and the schedule was again juggled, this time running the Aprilia Cup Challenge and two lesser races first, the NRRS Sportsman and 600cc SuperS port Amateur. The thinkjng was that those races would dry the quickly drying track and hand the second Unlimited Superbike field a completely dry racetrack. It didn't happen. On the third lap of the race, Synergy Racing Technologies' Mark Palazzo crashed his Honda CBR929RR entering turn six, the slide leaving a trail of fluids in its wake. All manner of personnel and machinery were employed to clean the spill, but the sky was rapidly getting darker and the race was cancelled. "We were praying that the wind would blow over, because we were watching on the radar and on the STORY AND PHOTOS BY HENNY RAY ABRAMS DAYTONA BEACH, FI., MARCH 4 he second coming of the Formula USA National Road Race Series suffered plagues which were Biblical in scale. There was rain and there was darkness and there were 125cc riders who struggled mightily with gravity and common sense and ended up being defeated by both. The end result of this entire calamity was that the second leg of the Formula USA Unlimited Superbike class was cancelled at 6:30 p.m., when it became obvious that the most recent crash couldn't be cleaned up in time to run the race. Despite falling rain and a wet track, the first leg of the Unlimited Superbike race ran to term, though it was shortened to eight laps from the original 12. It was over by the end of the first lap. Valvo line Emgo Suzuki's Grant Lopez had the right combination of machine, rider, and tires (in his case, Michelin rains) to decimate the field. The result was only in doubt because of the uncertainty that rain riding brings, but Lopez kept it on two wheels and moving forward, winning by a whopping 23.271 seconds at the end of the eight-lap, 28.48-mile race. Lopez hadn't raced in the rain for years, though he had practiced in the wet. "I got out there and took a real hard warm-up lap and felt good and I didn't know what to expect really, who would be doing what, because I didn't really get to see them on the warm-up lap," Lopez said. "But I took off, and said, 'We can do this.''' Lopez added that the "lead got bigger and bigger and I liked it. Obviously, I wished they could have turned around and had the second leg T 14. MARCH 14,2001 • cue I e n e _ s Internet," said Kevin Elliott, the road race manager for the Championshjp Cup Series. "But it just kept looking like, man, we're going to get through this, it's going to come through. We hate to change the schedule, but we decided we'd move it a little bit. It just didn't work out. We wound up shooting ourselves in the foot. We had that 20-minute window and we could have got it done if it wasn't for that last red flag." Elliott said the delays in cleaning up the chicane were the result of both the wet and the 125cc crashes. "When it was raining, the whole track had the same traction consistency," he said. "And as it started to dry, obviously there was some residue or just because it being a little bit damp where the track is worn, it was just really slick right there and we just couldn't get it up, so that's why we brought the jet-blower out. "We djd everything we could and then after the jet dryer went through there and just blew it all off, it looked good. The 125s ran right through the center of it. It was just unfortunate that Samantha Cotter had a problem in turn one," ElHott said. The problem in the chicane had forced F-USA officials to call a riders' meeting in the middle of the program. They decided to make the chicane a no-passing zone, single-file non-racing from the entrance to the white stripe on the way out. The ban was lifted for the second Unlimited Superbike race, not that it mattered. It was the first race that counted and it was Millennium Technologies' Shawn Higbee jetting to the lead from the pole position. He wasn't there long and gradually faded back to 10th place. Lopez took over and ran away, the spots behind him in constant flux. Arclight Racing's Lee Acree was an early second at the front of a charging pack, Australian Craig Connell just behind after muffing the start. "The first leg for me, I got a pretty poor start, actually," Connell said. "I sort of missed it completely. I'm not used to a flag as a starting signal." Connell moved the Advanced Motorsports Ducati into second on the third of eight laps, Byron Barbour and Acree hanging in, the trio away from a fight over fifth between M&M Mortgage's Brian Stokes and Kenneth Chase. "I worked my way up to second and by the time I got to second, I think Grant [Lopez] was gone," Connell said. "I just felt, 'Well, it's pretty crappy conditions and I'll just try to control second and not do anything silly' and that's exactly what I did. The track was pretty good really, to be honest with you. It was wet everywhere, so you knew exactly what to expect." Connell didn't have much wetweather experience in his native Australia, but said the Dunlop rain tires made the job easier. Craig Connell (153) leads Byron Barbour (hidden) and Acree (84) In their battle for second place In the tim leg of the two-race Unlimited Superbike event. Connell ended up second with Barbour third and Acree fourth.