AMAIChevy Trucks U.S. Superbike Series
Round 1 : Daytona International Speedway
Aaron Yates (20) rode his Yoshimura
Suzuki GSX-R1000 to fourth in the
bike's first race outing. Yates led
multiple times throughout the race,
but a mistake after encountering
lapped traffic ultimately cost him a
chance at the win.
"Anthony [Gobert] thought the
race was 10 laps instead of 57, and
he tried to pass me on the outside,
which he did," Kurtis said later.
"When he came up beside me, he
was squeezing me off, and it was like,
'Dude, I don't have any room down
here. What are you doing?' I had to
get on the brakes pretty hard and got
the rear end to light, and it started
coming around. I had to stand it up
and go through the chicane."
As they crossed the stripe at the
end of 16 laps, DuHamel had almost
a second on Gobert with a gap back
to Yates, Eric, Ben and Mladin. Then
came Kurtis, now 7.8 seconds behind
DuHamel after his off-track excursion. Then it all went wrong for
Mladin in turn one, and he almost
crashed, allowing Kurtis to knife his
way past. A lap later and Mladin was
more than 14 seconds behind the
leader, though he was still in seventh
place.
Gobert headed to the pits for the
first time at the end of the 18th lap,
with Ben joining him seconds later.
Gobert's stop was slower, and Ben
very nearly beat him out of the pits.
At the end of the 19th lap, Kurtis
pitted for his first stop. Mladin joined
him on Pit Road, getting in and out
quickly.
The race leader, DuHamel, took to
the pits a lap later, joined by Eric.
Ditto for Yates and Spies, as the pits
suddenly became a busy place.
With all of the top men having pitted, the order after 21 complete laps
was: DuHamel, Ben Bostrom (-3.9
seconds), Eric Bostrom (-6.6 seconds), Yates (-8.8 seconds), Kurtis
Roberts (-14.2 seconds), Barnes
