VOL. 53 ISSUE 19 MAY 17, 2016 P65
Mees and he's like a possum,
you never know when he's go-
ing to sneak up on you. I kept
charging until about halfway and
realized I had a good lead, then I
just kept her on the rubber."
As the race wore on Mees and
his Las Vegas Harley-Davidson/
Rogers Racing Harley-Davidson
were slipping farther off the
leaders' pace, but was actually
pulling away from the rest of the
clean race," said Smith. "I got off
the line pretty good and got by
Jake [Johnson] right off the bat.
I just wanted a clean track and
clean race."
"We were only working with a
foot-and-a-half [groove width],"
added Smith. "There were a
lot of different lines within that
foot-and-a-halfwith the ruts and
whoop-de-dos coming off turn
two. The first couple laps I was
trying to figure it out. I thought
I had three and four good. I
thought someone was coming
on the outside or inside of me
coming off of two, I thought it
was Jake.
"Finally I looked down low and
there was a good line in the dirt
pile down low. Once I figured
that out I felt consistent. I looked
back after five laps and had
a gap. I did see it was [Jared]
