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FLAT TRACK AMA PRO FLAT TRACK SERIES ROUND 9 / AUGUST 16 PEORIA RACE PARK / PEORIA, IL P110 My Own Race: 17 HENRY WILES 1 ST Henry Wiles was naturally the favorite coming into Peoria 2015, but a lot of people felt Jared Mees was going to step up to challenge the current King of Peoria. One of those who felt that way was Wiles himself. "You know Jared races all the time," Wiles said. "He's out there rac- ing every little race he can hit and I'm not. So he's gotten really tough. We were chasing bike setup a lot of the day. In the morning I was really worried that we might not get it done this year. But the Zanotti crew just chipped away and made the bike better and better as the day wore on. I was happy with the way they prepped the track today. At first it was a little bit one-lined, but then they put some water down and you could run up high on the groove. They guys we were lapping figured that out and that gave me a little room to get by them. When we came up on a big group of four or five guys I heard him (Mees) right on me again. I knew I would have to race smart. Luckily I did everything right. There are so many variables that can happen in a race. You could hit something and your tire starts going low, spin a tube, your bike could break… anything. So winning this race for 11 straight years is very special to me and I feel honored to do it here at Peoria." 14 BRIAR BAUMAN 5 TH Briar Bauman scored his fourth top-five finish of the season on his Rod Lake Racing Honda and that moved him up to sixth in the standings. "I think we felt like we had a little more," Bauman said. "We made a pretty big change (to the bike settings) before we went out. Not huge, but a pretty good change and I think it actually ended up hurting us a little bit. I was running fourth for most of the race and JD Beach got by us there at the end. I looked back and saw I had a good gap so I backed it down and came home fifth. We gained some valuable points and we're just one point out of fifth. We made some adjustments to the bike to try to help get a little better traction and the track changed and we lost traction coming out of (turn) four, but it is what it is. 1 JARED MEES 2 ND Jared Mees said that this year he had two races on the calendar he had marked that he wanted to win – the X Games and the Peoria TT. While he didn't close the deal at either one, victory was agonizingly close in both. Mees looked unbeatable early in the day at Peoria; his confi- dence was at an all-time high. His form off the jump was unreal. He clearly had the longest launches of the day. But then he finished second in his Heat race to rookie Dominic Colindres and rival Henry Wiles beat him in the Dash for Cash, and suddenly the invincibility he had in the morning was lessened. "It was a good race, I pushed hard and came up just a little short," Mees said. In talking about encountering a bunch of lapped traffic Mees ex- plained, "Sometimes it helped me, sometimes it hurt me. I needed to get a little bit better start. We came off the line one-two and we needed it to be one-two my way. It was a lot of fun chasing him down. We put a lot of work and effort into it and we were right there." 66Y DOMINIC COLINDRES 3 RD The surprise of Peoria 2015 was the performance by the rookie expert Dominic Colindres. The young rider from Northern California stunned the Peoria crowd when he beat Mees in the first heat race. He proved that victory was no fluke when he earned the podium finish, the first in the premier GNC1 class. "My first GNC1 race here and getting a podium, I couldn't be more pumped," Colin- dres said. "I got off the start in fourth and quickly made a pass to get third and I stayed there. I saw (JD) Beach and (Briar) Bauman behind me and I put just a little gap on them and kept that to the end and got third. Henry and Jared were far ahead of me. I don't know what we could have changed to get that much more speed. They were running good. I plan on racing the new Babe DeMay FZ- 07 Yamaha the rest of the year." 95 JD BEACH 4 TH Newly crowned MotoAmerica Supersport Champ JD Beach came back to race Pro Flat Track for only the second event this year, the first being the Daytona Short Track in March. Beach looked solid, passing series regular Briar Bauman late in the race to secure fourth. "My race went really well," Beach said. "I got a good start from the second row and I got by a lot of guys. That helped me a lot, because with the power of the stock bike it was hard to get by guys in the heat race. I got a good start and was doing consistent laps. I got past Briar and then I was catching Dominic a little bit, but then he would gap me again and it went back and forth. To come to home fourth was pretty good for me. I was just hoping to make the main."

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