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DAYTONA 200 AMERICAN SPORTBIKE RACING ASSOCIATION MARCH 14, 2015 DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY/DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA P58 [Eslick's cheering section] was bouncing over there," Eslick said with a laugh. "But I wasn't sure, I didn't know where he [Herrin] was. First at the beginning of the race I had radio communication, that didn't work at all. Finally we got someone out on the pit board, but I didn't know what the gaps were or who was where. That made that last lap pretty interesting." As for Herrin, he felt the traditional pit green flag pitstops would've given him the edge that >>PROJECT MAYDAY Although it wasn't a win, Geoff May's podium finish and pole posi- tion was worth smiling about. For the 34-year-old Georgian, it's just the boost he needed. After a rough sea- son with a struggling new EBR team in World Superbike (one that could potentially put anyone off racing), May was left without a ride at late notice. And unfortunately for May, the plans he was working on for MotoAmerica— the newly formed AMA Superbike championship—fell through. Wanting to race and with no options on the table, May reached out to his fans on Facebook and Project Mayday was born. "I went on my Fan Page on Face- book and reached out to my fans to see if anybody had a contact for a title sponsor or somebody that'd be interested in backing my effort if I decided to go to Daytona," May said. "A handful of people said, 'try doing a crowd-sourcing campaign.' I honestly didn't know what that was at the time. Then some guys posted the site that I used—gofundme.com. "I went on there and figured, 'hey, I got nothing to lose.' I'm either going to sit at home and wish I went racing or I could give this a shot. So I did it on Friday afternoon, around five o'clock, and by Monday morning I had over $4,000 dollars to go racing." Although it was short of the $10,000 goal, it was enough for him to take on the rest of the risk finan- cially to go racing at Daytona. Add to that, he already had bought a Yamaha R6 two weeks before from a salvage auction online. "It's really cool, especially how there's been kind of a decline in spec- tators out at the races," he said. "It shows that people really do care. And the fans that come to the races, that follow it, are very passionate about it. That they actually want to see people race enough that they're willing to put their hard-earned money towards it. "It's really inspiring. I was ready just to kind of say, 'you know what, it's not working out. I'll just hang out and see what happens and not worry about racing.' But to see that kind of response, it's like, yeah I got to do it." And it wasn't just fans, people around the industry stepped up too. "It's very humbling not to have a ride and the fact that all those fans donated all that money," he said. "I reached out to the racing community and the response was overwhelming there as well." Including Perry Melneciuc, veteran road race mechanic and Project1 Atlanta founder, who won the 200 with Joey Pasacarella in 2012. Melneciuc With all the red flags the racing was close, but after that final restart it was down to these three: Herrin (2), Eslick (69) and Geoff May (99).

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