P58
guna Seca.
Beach had a solid weekend
as well and is now amongst the
five riders very much in title con-
tention at mid-season. Beach
raced his factory Yamaha Ex-
tended Service/Monster Energy
Yamaha to a 2-5 combo for the
weekend. It was not a bad result
overall, especially considering
Beach ran off the track and into
a gravel trap at speed and had to
use every ounce of his flat track
experience to keep his R6 on two
wheels. The off-track excursion
took Beach out of the lead group,
but his hair-raising ride was par
for the course in Sunday's wild
race. The race was a thriller the
entire way, with a lead group of
six battling most of the way with
countless passes among them.
Eslick had a relatively quiet
weekend in Alabama on his Rid-
ers Discount Racing Triumph,
with his fifth and sixth-place fin-
ishes. He was never in conten-
tion for the win in either race.
On Saturday he battled for fifth
with Steve Rapp and finished 23
seconds behind the leaders and
11 seconds behind fourth-place
rider Benny Solis. In Sunday's
race he was 21 seconds out of
the lead and in a tussle, which he
won, with Blake Young and Jake
Zemke over sixth. Perhaps his
intense schedule, with him also
racing in the Vance & Hines Har-
ley-Davidson XR1200 event, put
Eslick behind the eight ball. At
the end of the day, Eslick leaves
Alabama in the best position he's
been in since winning Daytona.
He has to consider himself fortu-
nate to be only 12 points out of
the series lead now going into
the second half of the season,
but inside it's almost certain he
knows that fifth and sixth-place
results aren't going to cut it if he's
to be a true title contender.
"With this two-day format we
struggled a little bit with set up
and didn't have the time to get
DAYTONA SPORTBIKE
AMA DAYTONA SPORTBIKE SERIES
ROUNDS 4-5/JUNE 21-22, 2014
BARBER MOTORSPORTS PARK/LEEDS, ALABAMA
Gagne (32) ended up third on
Sunday with Lewis (85) finishing
second. Jason DiSalvo (40) bounced
back from a mechanical on Saturday
to finish fourth.
