Cycle News

"It's just a huge weight off my shoulders," Lewis said. "It's been an up-and-down year. And last year I was close to winning [he scored three podium finishes]. This year I've been pretty close to winning. I've been working really hard at the Hayden house with Roger and he's been pushing me very hard in the bicycling, also on the motocross track. So it's just a huge relief to finally get the win." While Lewis led straight away, the win was not a shoo-in as he had three other riders in tow – series-points leader Jake Gagne on the Red Bull Road Race Fac- tory Yamaha, Y.E.S. Monster En- ergy Graves Yamaha's JD Beach and Daytona 200 winner Danny Eslick on the Riders Discount Triumph. Gagne fell victim to Beach and battled back and forth with Eslick, but all of them were in contention in that four-rider train. That was until the group came across lapped traffic in the Cork- screw, allowing Lewis to get a clean break that would give him enough of a cushion to be un- beatable. Beach was resigned to second. "I was really wanting that win," Beach said. "But it was a really good race. And hopefully next weekend we can put something together. I've got one of the best bikes out there so all I need to do is get a little better start and do some fast laps. And hopefully we can get the win next weekend." The lappers also gave Beach a little bit of a gap on Eslick and Gagne, who battled for that last podium spot to the bitter end. "We trying to start playing that cat-and-mouse game," Eslick said about his battle with Gagne. "We knew we couldn't catch up to the leaders here. It was like that knock down drag out for the podium. He would get me in on the brakes and I was getting slowed down enough and get- VOL. 51 ISSUE 28 JULY 15, 2014 P97 Briefly... Danny Eslick had a good weekend at Laguna Seca, breaking his podium drought since Daytona in Daytona SportBike and finally getting a win in his return to Harley class. "Being up here on the podium is huge," Eslick said after the SportBike race. "Obvi- ously, I had the big win at Daytona. And that's been the top of the year for me and everybody. But all I can think about is races that I've been losing since Daytona and not be- ing on the podium. Yeah, Daytona's awesome, but I want to be up here week in week out with these guys." Eslick also got his first win of the season on the Harley with some help from Rapp's jump-start penalty. "I've been getting a lot of seconds and just kind of getting beat up on this deal," Eslick said. "I think ev- erybody expected me to come in and win and it just shows these guys have been busting their butts and riding the crap out of these Harleys. It's definitely not the easiest bike to get around the racetrack. When you get up going to the pace that Steve [Rapp] and Kyle [Wyman] and myself and a couple of these other guys, [Benny] Carlson and stuff are go- ing… It makes it pretty tough. I don't want to be riding the Harley as hard as what I am right now with the duties that we have in SportBike." Kyle Wyman also talked about the raising of the bar in the Harley class. "It is pretty serious at the front of that class right now," Wyman said. "Here I just stood on the podium with two Daytona 200 winners. Obviously Steve Rapp and Danny Eslick are pretty good riders. They're setting the bar high." continued on next page

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