The Daytona 200!

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12th of March, 2026, the Moto America races from Daytona. On this episode, I'm Jim McDowell hosting with me from the West Coast of the United States, our Moto America correspondent, if you will, Jake Rower. Jake, good, what would it be? Evening, afternoon, at the afternoon for you there on the West Coast, very much darkened evening here for me. How the heck you doing, bud?

Hi, Jim, great to see you. Yeah, it's about dinnertime here on the West Coast and I'm looking forward to having a good chat about the latest action at Daytona. Yep, looking forward to it too. So I, you know, it was some pretty good racing, I thought from Daytona. The 200 was the draft fest that you expected to be.

Really every class now has turned into a draft fest, but yeah, we'll get through it and we will talk about it and hopefully you guys will all enjoy some Moto America coverage. It's been a very long time since we've done any kind of focus against Moto America, but Jake's come on to take the lead in this. And so hopefully everybody who's in the States is going to enjoy some of that kind of coverage. So if you are liking the coverage, how about you do this? Why don't you go to wherever you get this fine podcast and give us a like, subscribe to the show, donate if you can, or just leave a review where you get your podcast.

All that helps us to make the algorithm to make it more popular. And that's what we want to do because we want to bring the best fan-based content possible to each of the series that you love the most. Oh, with all that said, Jake, are we ready to talk about the racing down at Daytona? Let's do it. Okay.

All right. Well, I want to start with Super Hooligans. That's a class that I didn't pay much attention to until this year. I just kind of saw a little bit here, a little bit there, but the Hooligan bikes are that naked sort of super bike look, although I don't think the capacity is that great. I don't remember what these guys are riding on as far as capacity, but it was- It's a huge range, a huge range of machines.

That's what's so great about it. Yeah. What are there? There's Aprilia's. There's Aprilia.

Yep. There's the Aprilia RS 660 naked, I guess. Is that true? I know it's a 660, that much I'm sure of. Yeah.

And then there's the Harley Davidson Panamericas that are like 1250s. Wow. Okay. And then there's the Yamaha MT-09 as well as the Yamaha RS 900. Is that right?

Or is that the Kawasaki? I'm getting confused now, but there are a lot of different bikes in there, but there are strict limits on horsepower. So if you read the rules, there are like strict limits to about 125 horsepower is the limit. So that's how they kind of equalize it. I think it's amazing.

Roland Sands was there in the pits and doing some interviews. And I thought that was really cool, but he kind of, I think he sort of, this was his brainchild and it's now really becoming I think it's one of the best classes we have and it's really good racing. And I just love it. And also don't forget there are electric bikes in there. Yeah.

The Orange Cat racing team has those Lightfighter. Oh, okay. They have a couple of those in there. So that's really cool. And I think Josh Heron is going to be riding one of those.

That's interesting. Yeah. Just looking at the bikes here, it's like there's three Harley Davisons, well four Harley Davison's, Ducati, Yamaha, the electric bike, which I think is kind of different, interesting that you have an electric bike in there, which is kind of cool. So yeah, a lot going on here with Super Hooligans. So let's talk about the first race of the Hooligans.

Pietri got a whole shot followed by Rospoli, then Lewis and then Debrino. They were all there. This race becomes what it's a nine lap race. And it's always about figuring out where you want to be in the draft. Because these bikes are the naked bikes, there's no aerodynamics or anything.

It reminds me a bit of like old school third track mile. There's no way to, you just got to kind of tuck in your best you can, get loaded that tank, get the air flowing around you. But the draft is absolutely huge. I mean, how many times did we see everybody go running into the chicane at the back stretch at Daytona? They all go in there and like, oh, one or two guys could get that chicane just right because they got their break point right.

They got their turn in right. And you got two guys that break out of the pack and whoa, they got a four, five bank, five bike lead on who's ever coming out in like third, fourth. But then those guys third and fourth, when they get to that banking in NASCAR three, four, that draft just pulls them all back together again. Every time these guys crossed the line in this first race, it was like, it was a four wide, three wide kind of thing. And it was just super tight racing that was in there.

About halfway through this first one, Rospoli was leading West, he was leading Lewis and then Wyman was there. And then Gus Rodeo was there as well with his Ducati. It was really a fascinating race as it went on. But in the end of it, you had, I believe I have this one right. You had what Rospoli won the first race over West Lewis and Wyman, right?

Followed by Rodeo. Yeah, so it was like almost a photo finish, but didn't in the first race, Rodeo almost ate the wall like coming to like the triobal didn't he? Or was that the second race? I think, oh, that's the second race, sorry. I got my notes, I'm not great.

Yeah, that was the second race that they had that one in there. So yeah, that was pretty well crazy for that race. Any more thoughts on the Hooligan first race for you, Jake? Well, it was pretty amazing to see that Saddleman Harley Davidson team with three Panamericas and notably an FXR Harley, written by Travis Wyman coming in fourth, which had a big fiery incident in one of the practice sessions, which was pretty entertaining. I mean, that's like an old school bike, I think with like a separate transmission and an engine, like that's a real Harley.

Whoa, okay. But they made the thing go. So I thought that was kind of an amazing result for that team to basically sweep the top four positions with three Panamericas and an FXR. So I thought that was pretty notable. Yeah, those guys.

They're doing 170 miles an hour on the bank on those things. Oh, no, that's a bit much for me. Yeah, I mean, I always want to go to Daytona. Never ever to get the opportunity to go down. I think, you know, back in the day, as I always say, they had CCS would run their, want to run a race there, like I think either the weekend before the weekend after the 200.

I always want to go down and just do it as a fun thing, just to say that I actually did it. But yeah, I did a race in St. Louis at the Speedway they built their gateway. And we were running on the banking for a Weirah race. And I was like, kind of came back in on that first one.

My dad looks at me and says, what do you think? I said, well, I'm thinking I'm glad we never went to Daytona because this is scary as I'll get out. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty strange. It makes for a really odd suspension setup.

And I think it's probably a little less scary these days with the tire technology we have now. But I think, you know, a few decades ago, tires just exploded randomly and people got hurt. And it was, that was a big factor, I think, which I didn't, I don't think there were any issues like that this weekend. I don't think they've had those kinds of issues for a while. I think when they finally cut Superbikes out of it at Daytona, because this one thing that I do need to say, I had said in the show prior to this, that they weren't using the banking in one and two at the NASCAR banking.

Well, that's not true. So it tells you how long ago I remember them racing there. They actually have gone back to running the full track with both NASCAR turns into it. So I was like, whoa, okay, this is definitely way different than what I remember. Because I remember back in the day, like with Josh Hayes was racing Superbike and the last year or two of Ben Spees, that they had moved the 200 away from the Superbikes, but they still had a Superbike race.

And then that was the years that they would come out of the international horseshoe, head through the kink, then they would make a right-hand turn and then go back, catch the track and go back the other way through the other horseshoe. And then sort of down through the back stretch to get there. So watching this and being that way and having this change, it's like, wow, that's really amazing that, one, they're doing it, but two, again, tires are so much better than they were. Cause I mean, I think one of the last years, I think what finally did in Superbikes there was, I think Ben Spees had a terrible crash in testing prior to like the last one. Yeah, they used to have the Daytona tire test every, whatever it was, January or February, right?

And that was an annual thing that they would do in advance of the Daytona 200. But some of the commentators were saying that, essentially the SuperSport bikes now are essentially just as fast or maybe even faster than the Superbikes were. Definitely in the 90s. I'm not sure about in the Ben Spees era, but they're certainly not hanging around. No, that's for sure.

Back to the racing. First show for you and me, where are we going? Tangents. That's just how it works, I guess. That's why we're here.

That's right. Everybody's here for the tangents, that's for sure. Cause that's the entertaining part of the show. No, second race though. It sort of becomes like a repeat of the first.

That's for sure. I mean, they're definitely out there and they're going really hard at it. Again, it's another drafting race, that's for sure. And this one, Brispoli is leading. He's just going for it.

Brispoli would lead coming into the infield and he would try to pull away. But then the draft from NASCAR 1-2 back to the chicane would draw everybody back together again. And you could really see people starting to play games at the chicane. You could notice some people rolling off a little earlier than other people, some people breaking later, trying to figure out where everybody wants to be. It's that chess game that gets played at 170 miles an hour.

Well, where do I want to be? Can I pass you before we get to the finish line? Or do you pass me if I'm leading? And everybody's trying to put all that information together in there as they go through it all. But again, the draft on this was amazing for me that they were actually just, they could have one or two bikes out front and then a pack of four would just catch them in just what seemed like hundreds of feet for all of it.

But, you know, Brispoli was having a great race. He was leading for the vast majority of it. Pietro would come out there towards the end. He would lead followed by Louis West and Brispoli and then Rodeo there at the end. Then we get to the final lap.

It's who's going to outbreak who. So West goes into the chicane leading, but Louis winds up drafting by at the end to win. Louis wins that race. The second one, West is second, then Brispoli. But Rodeo was there.

He got buffeted around the draft, I guess, as they made their way to the trial when he was owing to the wall. It looked like he actually elbowed himself off of the wall at about 160, which was a crazy bit of racing right there. That's the part that I don't like about Daytona is there's walls. But, wow, great save, great racing here in the second one as well. So that's my take on it.

Yeah, yeah, it's something else. The one bike we forgot to mention that's in this series is the Arch, the bike company started by. Is that the one with Keanu Reeves as a part of? Yeah, Keanu Reeves and the other guy who actually got interviewed a lot in the pits. And I've already forgotten his name and I'll look that up and add it later.

But yeah, they've got their own, they're building their own engine now as well. Cause they were using, they were using like an S, they've used S and S engines in the past for the bikes that they've been selling to the public. But their latest one, they're actually making their own engine and they've employed the services of Suiter to help them with, yeah. So it's a great effort. That's crazy.

It's really cool. Yeah, it's really exciting to see that. That is awesome that they're a part of that, that they're involved in being a part of that as well. That's really cool. So, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, great racing there. That's for sure. And it was shot out to Andy Debrino coming in fourth. He, I've actually, you know, sort of raced with him on the track back when I was road racing about 10 years ago. He was kind of getting started at that point and he was just faster than everybody else.

But yeah, he's a good guy. And he seems to have made, I don't really know. I think he's made a professional career out of racing at this point, which is, it's not an easy thing to do. No, not here in the US, that's for sure. No, it's hard out there, but it seems like he's put together like some full seasons here in the national championship, or yeah, in the national championship in Moto America.

So just a little shot out to him from the Northwest. That works. So that is definitely cool for that. All right, let's go to the twins class. So the twins class is another one of my favorites just because it's just low horsepower bike.

A lot of new names, a lot of new faces in this is sort of where the quote kids start. And some very old faces as well. Yes, there are some of those too, that's true. Which is amazing, it's great. It is, it's sort of where old meets new and new meets older, however you wanna say that.

But yeah, it's pretty wild when they're all there and they're going through it and going at it or whatever, going at it, that's for sure. It's a two race format in this race as well. The first race you had Drain, who got a whole shot over Page, over Woodworth and Vosberg. Now Vosberg would lead there at the second lap and what you could see was that he would put his head down and he would run the infield section as hard as he possibly could. And he would put a tenth or so on him, but then the guys kind of would draft back by again.

But he played it smart and he always drafted back into the lead going into one, so he could lead in that infield section. After about four laps, he had actually broken the draft in that first race and was leading by a country mile. The battle then was, well, who's gonna be in the two, three, four, one position there? And that battle was really good because like I said, Vosberg is gone, but Page, Drain and Woodworth, they are just swapping it back and forth the whole time. It's one lap, it's take your pick.

It might be Drain in second, next time by it would be Woodworth and then third time by that'd be Page. It was all down to wherever it was going to finish in there. Vosberg would win and as they came to the line, Drain would get second and Page would have the last spot on the podium that one. It really, I thought that was a really impressive ride by Vosberg, don't you think, Jake? Yeah, I have my notes here that he just led from the start and nobody ever saw him after that.

He just, and did it all by himself without, like you're saying, like drafting is just such a massive component of Daytona, but he didn't need it. Yep, to draft, to pull away from people on a circuit that is 100% draft related is quite impressive, which shows you just how hard he could run through the infield. And one of the things about having two races, granted they are on different days, but you have that chance to sit and think about your setup, make a change and then see what you do better than next race. So I was interested to see race two solely from the standpoint of what did everybody else do to try to keep him from doing the same thing again. So we start off on the second race and in the beginning of that race, the first lap, there was a big crash going into the International Horseshoe.

It took down some three bikes by my count from what was on the TV screen. And two riders got up immediately, one rider was down and the quick cutaway showed no movement from that particular rider. Now I do not know who that rider is. Do you know who it was Jake? Were you able to determine that?

Cause I sure couldn't. Yeah, they didn't say anything in the coverage that I was seeing there either. What was scary was they then went to a red flag after they'd gotten about three quarters of the way around. They went to the red flag and at that point, the rider from the camera angles I saw looked, it appears though he had never moved during that entire time. So for somebody to have not moved, what I think was at all was really scary.

I did do some searching to try to find out who it was and see if they were, are okay or what happened to them. So if anybody out there knows who was involved in that twins class crash in the second race on the first lap, let us know. MotoPod.MotoPodcast.com is the email. Love to know, I would hope that everyone is 100% okay there. But it was, it is and remains in my mind a scary moment, a scary reminder of what can go wrong at places like Daytona.

We got back into this race. So what is a nine lap race became a six lap race as they shortened the distance for it. So six lap race, start again, Vosberg gets a whole shot again, Page is right there, Aghazi, then Chapman, then Drain. They three to go, it's a drafting battle, but everybody's staying together and Aghazi has dropped off of the back of the pack. So what was a four rider run became like a three rider run as they were going through with one to go.

Chapman has got a lead over Vosberg, over Drain and Page. And then as they go through to the chicane Drain would lead, but then he would get passed by Chapman as they went through three, four. And as they came to the line in a heap of three riders, Drain did win the race barely over Vosberg and then Page and then Chapman. And your last fifth place was in Aghazi, which is an impressive ride by him to get there. So another really good race that was sort of in my mind darkened slightly by the potential injury to one of the riders at the start.

So that gives us the second twins cup race. Thoughts there? Yeah, Sam Drain won by a 100th of a second from Matthew Chapman. And then the gap from Matthew to Hank was 58,000th of a second, if you will, or 5.800th. So yeah, it was very, those three were really, really really close together when they went across the line.

And yeah, I mean, credit to Sam Drain, he's just a young kid. I don't know. He's dark tracking there too. He had won the flat race. Right, right.

But he's a young, he's Australian, isn't he? Or I think he's Australian. That's a good question. I don't have that answer. No, he is.

He's not American. Yeah, he's just a young kid. And there's been some fun footage of him in the pits hanging out with the other twin, the younger guys. And yeah, so he's really one of the youngest. Wow.

So yeah, credit, shout out to him. Timing those drafts is, that's a skill that not, I don't think it comes to everybody naturally. It's complicated. Yeah, there's a lot more to it. I know first time I got to go to a mile and race on third on a mile was a big wake up to like what the draft can actually do and just how it moves you in.

And, but one of the things that nobody kind of tells you, so I'll let you have this little secret, is the dragging of the rear brake on a flat tracker as you go in that draft, if you want a whole position. If you don't, it's like, oh, okay, that's how we do this. Oh, kind of a thing. Same thing kind of happens in road racing. It's like, oh, how much of that rear brake do I want to drag?

Cause that's going to keep you stable slightly. But then it also is, it's just a drain, just enough to let the other guy stay ahead or position you to where you don't look like you shut off, but you're slowing down that, just that slightly little bit. It's gamesmanship. It's all, it's a 3D chess game at 150 for sure. So fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I know it is kind of fun to watch the different strategies and see which ones work and which ones don't. And there's definitely a lot of luck involved too. I mean, it's a- Right place, right time. Yep, yep.

There's no question about that. So where do we want to go to next? To baggers? Sure. So I was watching some of the practice and it looked like Kyle Wyman, who is the number one bike on the Harley.

It looked like his gearing was short cause he was not able to ever, once he was in a draft, it looked like he could not pass anybody. So I was wondering, I wonder if he had the gearing a little bit short. The Indians looked faster and more stable than the Harleys to me. If, you know, if a bagger can be fast and stable, which apparently it can, cause these things, when you look at the lap times, it's like, they're pretty much doing the same lap times as the super sport bikes. I mean, pretty close, like 150, which to me is staggering.

For a bike that's that big and they still have the saddlebags like on them. And that's like trying to drive your gold wing around the whole track, right? It's just crazy. Crashing these things too. I watched several crashes.

It's like they're really, they're kind of ridiculous looking, but they're racing these things hard. There's people like Bradley Smith out there from the UK. It's kind of cool. I mean, that's kind of cool. Maybe he's sad about it.

I don't know, but it's kind of cool to see. Yeah, I was really down on the baggers before Daytona and I'm coming around a little bit. I'm starting to see maybe there are some virtues and some reasons to do it. And if it brings more people to the track, then it's hard to argue with. I can't argue with that either.

It's a spectacle. Sure, 100%. Yeah, I mean, it's like they race semi-truck trackers in Europe. You take something that has no business going fast and figure out a way to make it go fast. I guess this is kind of the same thing.

Tangent time. They used to race semis in the US at Talladega on the super speedway back in the late 70s and the early 80s. If you hunt down YouTube, you can find it. Yeah, so it's not just- I've only ever seen that. I've never seen it outside of Europe, which always kind of surprised me.

It was like one, maybe two years that they did it. And one of the biggest problems was they were all blonde. Because they- No one makes a semi-tire that's going to fit there. But anyway, a side note done, if you want to see something wild and crazy, go search YouTube for that. A side done.

I will make that up. I'll make a point of doing that. So the race won, Mission King of the Baggers championship. Yeah, I'll just list the results and then we can discuss it further. So Hayden Gillum on the 69 Indian Challenger won the race and his, I believe his teammate Troy Herfoss on the other Indian Challenger got second.

So they came and got a one, two, which is kind of a big deal because I think that's a new bike this year. I believe that Indian Challenger is new this year. And then Kyle Wyman, number one on the Harley-Davidson Road Glide got third. And then Bradley Smith who we just talked about got fourth on the same bike. And then James Rispoli again on another Harley.

Yeah, so Tyler O'Hara sixth on another Indian and then Jake Lewis on a Harley, Corey West on a Harley and eighth Max Flinders and ninth on a Harley. And then Kyle Owensburg did not finish on an Indian. I guess he's got a DNF in 10th. I know I've seen the baggers at Koda one year. I know that it was just, it seemed like they defy physics somewhat.

Like something that big shouldn't go that fast and it surely shouldn't be as stable as they are. They have worked very hard on those bikes to make them stable. Cause some of the first races, they were just trying to tie themselves in knots. And they, not that you can be planted and stable at Daytona due to the banking and how you have to run your suspension to take care of that stress. But they have come a long way and they are, becoming fun to watch.

Something that may have to take a little more interest in as the season proceeds for sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. I need to look at the rules, but I think they maybe have to use a stock frame. I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe they can modify it.

They're certainly not using stock swing arms or forks or any of that stuff. All that stuff is full custom. Like the swing arms are these, I mean, I think if you get up close to one of these bikes, probably pretty impressive to look at the hardware. There's a lot of expensive machine billet parts. Is this baggers race at the Ridge this year?

Do we know? I haven't looked at the schedule. They don't go to the Ridge. They don't go to the Ridge. And they're not going to barber either.

I'm planning on going to barber in May. I've never been, I've always wanted to go to that museum. Oh, that museum is absolutely amazing. Yeah, I mean, I've seen a lot of photos and it's sort of world class or maybe even one of the biggest working motorcycle museums, probably anywhere. I know of nothing bigger.

I was blown away by the number of floors that that place has and the bikes that are in it. And I mean, I've been around bikes my entire life. I mean, from the moment I could stand up and walk, I was riding a bike. And okay, so I think I know every, or I've heard of every motorcycle that's ever been made, ever. I walk in there with my buddies and it's like, yeah, I know a lot of the bikes are there.

They're like, oh, wow, there's an RC30 Honda. There's the NR750 Honda. Oh, wow, there's Rich Oliver's TZ250 that he went over for two years. And at the time, May and May Road Racing, blah, blah, blah. Ooh, there's the ATK, blah, blah, blah.

Here's this, oh man, here's the Britain, da, da, da. I have no idea what that motorcycle is. I have never heard of this bike. Oh, what? I don't know, you know, and you find all of that.

So it's absolutely amazing. So yeah, anyway, if we go to the second race of the baggers, this time around the Herfos ones, this one, followed by Rocco Landers. Now, Rocco had a DNF in the first race. So for him to come back and finish second on the Indian on the second race is there, which is pretty nice. So that sort of turns over from the Harleys.

It turns back to an Indian race here. So apparently the Indians must be pretty good as long as they can keep them to stay together. Wyman does a lot better to be third this race, followed by Bradley Smith, then Rispoli, Tyler O'Hara, Corey West, Jake Lewis, Hayden Gilmah having a rough go of it as he was down in ninth, then Max Flanders. The second race obviously a little bit different than the first race with the Indians coming back on top. So I think it's one of those things we're gonna have to see what happens when they venture off to other tracks and see who has the upper hand.

Or if it's one of those things where one race is just somebody by the leaders, could have been a big draft game too. We'll keep an eye on this one. I think we'll have to put a little more attention to the baggers next time, Jake. Yeah, no, I'm into it. I'm into it.

I will not disparage it anymore. Well, that's fair. It's okay. No, so we can always just do it once. Ah, right, so let's get to the granddaddy of them all, the Daytona 200.

Now, the 200 has changed over the years, specifically now using what is the SuperSport bikes, which those rules are weird in and of itself because you can have a GSX-R 750 Suzuki from back in the day in the class. You can have the R6 Yamahas. The Ducati Penigale V2 is allowed to be in this class. There's all kinds. There's a Triumphs are in there.

Some older Kawasaki's are in there as well. So it's a pretty good mix and there's some equivalency formula. I'm not sure exactly if it's restrictors or not that keeps the 750s not being as fast as the 600s. Do you know, Jake, if they've got a restriction on the 750s or did they abandon that now? I'm not sure where they are.

I don't think the seven, I think the Ducati's might have some kind of restriction in the ECU to limit the power. Maybe it's a rev limit, I'm not sure. I don't, I think that 750 is like pretty old now and I think they basically just, I don't think it's restricted. I could be wrong, but I didn't hear anything about that. I think the Ducati is far and away the fastest bike.

And so I think they're restricting that one. And there's only a couple of 600s out there. It's mostly Triumphs, R9s, Ducati's and yeah, a lot of GSXR 750s. There's really only a couple of 600s out there, I think. Is anybody building brand new 600s?

I think it's done. I think it's over. Cause I know it's like they were running what? 300s in SuperSport and World Superbike. So you're 300 to a thousand, nothing in between.

Who knows? I'm a fan. No, no, no, that's no, they're still, they're running like the R9, right? That's gotta be in World SuperSport, right? Okay, okay.

You know what? We'll have to ask the guys who cover World SuperSport. Yeah, we should ask them. We should ask them. We'll have to make, we'll get that.

We'll get that one. They get another, another Superbike race in. But anyway, let's, we're here to talk about 200, not speculate about what's going on in Europe and whatnot. But it is just kind of awkward. It just, there's so many different types of bikes that are in this class.

And it's a really sort of weird hodgepodge. But Heron was struggling through practice. He did not get himself on pole. That was, I think that was Tyler Scott, I think on the Suzuki. I think he had the pole from, got that one right.

But either way, it's 57 laps or 58 laps for the 200, 56 laps for the 200. It's 57, but because of the restart, they did 56. Okay. They had a restart in the race? They did.

Oh, we got to tell you more about that when we get there. Yeah. So as the race started, it's also, it's the only race in America that you have pit stops. Correct. And, and it's worth noting that they've reduced the fuel capacity limit from 20 liters to 15.5 liters, which necessitated an additional pit stop compared to years prior.

So this year, three pit stops, whereas in most, you know, in recent memory, it's always been two pit stops. Wow. Another wrinkle of it that is added into it. Okay. Well, at the start of this one, you know, jump in here, when we get to the red flag as we're going through, but Heron just made like a great start.

He went right to the front. I mean, I think you had to think that Josh was going to be like sort of the favorite. He's got the Ducati, which I think is the preferred bike. Man, he was looking completely strong on that. You know, Heron was out front.

He had Bender behind him. Now, if you think that name's familiar about OGP fans, it is because it's Darren Bender, Brad Bender's brother, who has now come to the States. He, correct me if I'm wrong on this one, Jake, he's riding SuperSport and he has a Superbike ride as well with that team for the season because it's a Ducati, I think. Yes, no, I'm not sure. Darren Bender is riding in SuperSport.

That's it. On one of the Warhorse Ducati Panigale V2s. That's what I have. I don't, so he came from Moto2, you know, he came from the MotoGP Moto2 class. And yeah, now he's riding.

Just that. He just showed up this year. This is his first year. Yep. So he was out there with them, which was great.

Then Tyler Scott and then Kayla Yakov. Kayla was there, which, you know, I've seen her race at like pit race a couple of times. She was definitely an up and comer. And, you know, for her to have qualified well and then to be running sort of in that top five, top six at the start, I thought was really impressive for her. About 10 laps into it, Heron's out front.

Bender's right there with them, but then PJ Jacobson has now sort of worked his way to the front and is getting on with the program as everybody starts to get in there. Then we had Scott and Yakov there as well. It's always gonna be a draft race. It's a long race, so we're trying to work to condense it and get to the sort of the high points here. By the time we go into the first set of pit stops, Heron stops, they have a new rule.

As you said, they've got less capacity in the fuel, but they also have, you are not, as the fuel is going into the bike, you are not allowed to touch the motorcycle. So before you could be putting fuel in, changing the rear tire, changing the front tire. So it was interesting to see the teams' takes on which way they wanted to do it. Some teams were, let's do tires, then let's do fuel. Some teams were fueled in tires.

Everybody's got their own decision about which way it's going to be for the best. But Heron's pit stop kind of turned difficult for him because of the fact that he wound up having the bike fail to start again as he was leaving on that one. Now, I don't know what caused it, but I got a speculation here, Jake. I'm thinking that they ran it really, really tight on fuel on that first stop because he didn't go as far on the next stops. And I'm wondering if it was just enough where the heat of the engine started to vaporize off some of the fuel that was there, but with fuel injection, you should have been able to purge that and get cold fuel to it and make it go again, but it didn't.

Any thoughts on what you think happened there with that pit stop? Yeah, I had some thoughts as well, just about vaporization and issues in the fuel system. But who the hell knows? I mean, it's impossible to say. I do have that he lost nine seconds.

Yeah, which was huge. Which was a lot of time. And then he put his head down and did like a string of like six laps in the 49s and 48s, which was like- Which was amazing. Qualifying times, like wow, with a full tank of fuel. Yeah, kind of reminiscent of somebody who crashed at the first horseshoe on a green motorcycle back in the day and then picked it up and started running qualifying laps to get back into it.

I don't know. Maybe he was telling the ghost, not the ghost, but the spirit of Scott Russell back in the day, right? I mean, that's sort of what my mind went to. I don't know where your mind went on that one. Josh is just generally impressive that way.

He had several setbacks during this race and every time he kind of put himself back together and fixed it. So I got to give him a lot of credit for being able to face that adversity and triumph in spite of it. Yeah, by 20 laps, PJ is now out front. Escalante has joined the pack with the missions. Izuki is there.

Scott, Heron, Bender, Yakov. I mean, Caleb was always there at this, which we'll get to why that's important at the end. Heron had lost that lead due to the pit stop. He ran those fast laps, qualifying pace laps to get himself back into this one. And he did recover nine seconds, which is amazing to think that he had gotten that far in there and essentially considering that all the bikes are really pretty competitively close to each other.

The equivalency formula keeps everybody sort of on track with that, if you will. So I got here by lap 25. PJ is out front. Heron's right behind him. Escalante, Scott, Bender, and then Yakov there.

Now, Bender has a terrible second pit stop in this race. They tried to fill it full of fuel, then they pulled it off. They went to get the tires. They said, no, I don't have the fuel in it. They went back to putting fuel in it again, a second try.

And then it was like a third time lucky they finally got all the fuel in it, then took the tires. I don't know, that was a lot of time lost. It was more than the nine seconds that Heron had. It was a huge amount of time. I don't have a number on it, but he was way back as a result of that terrible pit stop.

Yeah, I don't know what, I mean, the guys that he's with, right, and they are not strangers to this race, but for them to have that trouble was sort of surprising to me. Yeah, I think the pit stops obviously is a huge part of this race. And it is what makes it exciting, honestly, because it's really the only event where this sort of thing happens. There is no other endurance racing in the series. So yeah, it was amazing to watch a really successful pit stop when they can literally swap both wheels and fill the fuel tank in, I mean, it feels like seconds.

It's really fast. But yeah, when it goes wrong, there was one of Josh Hayes' pit stops. They could not get the front wheel to go back in. They just kept struggling and kept struggling. And he just stood back and calmly waited.

And it was like, I mean, one bad pit stop can basically ruin your race, right? Like if you lose a minute or two, like it's really hard to recover. Yep. 10, 15 seconds maybe if you're Josh, but a minute or two, I think it's like, that's it, you're done. Yeah, you're probably not coming back from any of that.

So somewhere in here, we get to the red flag that stops the race. So I'll let you... Well, so it happened right at the beginning. You may have even missed it. So it happened right at the start.

I just have, there was a big messy crash with several riders right at the start. Oh, is that the start? I thought it was later on in the race. No, it was right at the start. Okay.

And yep, a bunch of people went off the outside and into that barrier. It was really, it was pretty dramatic. It was just kind of your typical... First lap melee? Yeah, first lap melee with a lot of different...

I didn't realize it was a first lap melee. I had only enough time to watch sort of a condensed version of it and there was no talking about that. Yeah, they probably just deleted that. There was a huge gap in the coverage because they were at lap 25 and then they sort of come back in at eight laps to go. So I assumed that the red flag happened in that section of the race, apparently not.

Well, that's fine. Yeah, and so they just did a full restart and took one lap off. So it was 56 instead of 57. Gotcha. Okay.

Well, there's really not a whole lot that's happening in there. I mean, Heron's got the lead. And I mean, we'll actually not take that back. PJ has gotten himself back to the front and Heron is now second, which would be as a result of the pits. I think they changed on the third pit stop, right?

Like PJ... Pit stop three was pretty dramatic. I kind of took notes in terms of pit stop one, two, and three and pit stop three. Talk us through pit stop three. So pit stop three, PJ and Heron, who are teammates on very different looking motorcycles, but they are teammates just with different headliner sponsors for this event.

They come in on their pair of Ducatis with 13 laps to go on their third and final pit stop. And what was noticeable was the two pits were very close together physically. So I believe PJ's pit was farther ahead along pit lane and Heron's was kind of right behind PJ's. So they come in at the same time. I can't, I think PJ was just ahead of Josh and they both came into the pits kind of one after the other and they were really close to each other.

And there's a bunch of camera people around, a bunch of people that are not part of the pit crews that are filming these pit stops. And one of the camera people who's filming PJ's pit stop ahead of Josh, as PJ is, as his pit is concluding and he's getting back onto the bike, this cameraman is sort of like watching the bike and backing up, sort of backing away from PJ, not knowing and kind of not thinking about the fact that Josh is right behind him and is gonna come out of his pits at about the same time because they both came in at the same time. So he's backing away and then Josh finishes his pit, gets on and goes, pulls out and immediately runs into this camera person who's not looking in that direction. Wow, okay. Hits him, he isn't going very fast at this point.

So it's not a huge collision, but it stops Josh and he gets, you know, it's an awkward thing and he has both his foot off the pegs and the bike almost tips over, but he doesn't tip it over, but it's really awkward and the cameraman kind of jumps and it's a whole thing. And Josh, again, this is like the second big adversity that he faces in the pits where like he loses, I didn't lose out a lot of time, but it really knocked him, knocked him off his center, you know, and upset his balance. So it looked like he lost, I've got four seconds here. And PJ's quick. So PJ's gone and when you, you know, four seconds looks like a lot of distance as he's leaving the pits.

So yeah, that's what happened on pit stop three with. Okay, so that's how PJ is leading with like eight laps to go with. Right. I think he's PJ, this is what I was gonna ask you. I know that Heron was trying to run PJ down.

Now, PJ tries to go up the inside of a slower rider, a lap rider, and that's at the turn exiting the infield. So what would be the turn that takes you out and up to the banking of NASCAR one. PJ goes in there from my look, he was hustling to get there. He didn't wanna follow that rider through the turn because he wanted to get the drive on the banking and he pushed it a little too far, tucks the front and he's down and out because, you know, the coverage I saw would cut a cut right back to it and PJ's down. They're like, Oh, there's another lap rider in the way.

Oh, lap rider must have went down and took PJ with him. It was like, no, on replay, PJ kind of does this all to himself and I'm wondering, is it because Heron was starting to chasing down and he felt rushed or brain fade? So I, my notes say that after that pit, PJ is pushing 49. He's going fast. Heron is not matching PJ's times after that third pit stop.

He's in the fifties and the gap goes from, you know, the four seconds he lost up to five seconds and then up to as much as six second gap between Heron and PJ. Then with six, with eight laps to go, PJ passes a lapper entering into turn six. He gets past, he gets past the person, number 125, gets past him and then tucks the front, just a little too much trail breaking. And what was kind of interesting to me is that the person that rider 125 who he passed does exactly the same thing. So he's like, in my mind, the back marker gets passed by PJ and then he basically tries to stay with him.

He's like, Oh, well, if he can do it, I can do it. I'll try to try to stay on his line and just maintain my gap here. And they both basically just like over load the front tire and tuck the front and they both crash and just slide off the track. There was no contact between them at all. It was just like this sort of synchronized crash of these two people.

It was, it wasn't violent. I don't think anybody got hurt, but it ended PJ's campaign which was sad because he was doing really well. Wow, wow, wow. That is crazy. So that fills in some of the gap there for me.

So as this finishes out, I mean, at that point no one's gonna catch Heron. Heron romps home for the victory. Tyler Scott's got a very comfortable second place out of all of this. He comes second, but then the battle then for these last eight laps is really yack off against Darren Binder. Fantastic, absolutely.

This was the highlight of the race for me. Tell us about it then. Well, I'm more excited about it now because I didn't really know a lot about Kayla Yackoff before this race. And anyway, so I, the fact that this, she's 19 years old is battling with this Moto2 rider really warmed my heart. It was like, it was really great to watch.

With five laps to go, Binder finds his way around Kayla. I'm gonna call her Kayla, not Yackoff. I don't know why. I think it's better to call her Kayla too. Yeah.

So gets past, gets past her. It seemed a little early because like this is, to me it's like, if you can just run the laps of your competitor you just stay behind them until it's the right time to pass the draft. But anyway, they sort of did this back and forth thing which was interesting. There was some kind of mind games going on. Binder gets past her with five to go and Kayla just stays behind him.

And then for some reason, or actually not for some reason she passes Binder before the last lap because Binder ran wide. Now I don't know which corner this was on but it was on the, it was in the infield. He made a mistake cause he was pushing. Binder goes wide on the horseshoe. Kayla gets by.

Kayla gets by, but she sort of like doesn't have a choice. So as I'm watching it, I'm like, no, stay behind him. But he ran so wide and it's a fairly slow corner that she just sort of had to, she had to, she had to go past him. But then somehow for no reason I can explain Binder catches up and then passes her again. And I'm just like, what are you doing?

Like just stay behind her. After she came. Yeah, why are you passing her again? Just, just stay in her draft. So this happens a couple of times and somehow Kayla times it perfectly so that she's behind Binder on the last lap.

And I can't remember, I didn't write which banking. I think she rolled off going into one for the last lap. Cause with two to go, Binder makes his mistake. Right. And then, you know, he passes her at the chicane.

I think he thought, well, I'm just going to run off on her like I had before, but she was right there with him in the draft and you know, they then go to the final lap where. Yeah. So she, no, I've got it now. She timed it perfectly right. I mean, she passed him on the final banking right before the finish, you know, right before the finish line.

And yeah, she got third. She got the podium and beat a Moto2 rider. So that was amazing. And the best, not the best part, but a really fun tidbit is that when she came around after winning, she stopped and picks up PJ Jacobson and gives him a ride back to the pits on the back of her bike. And I thought that was fantastic.

Like that was really great. Apparently they are friends and he's been helping her train and she really sung his praises on the podium and thanked him a lot. So I thought that was very sweet. That's awesome. Well, that she made, it's a lot of history here, right?

And she made for the States a lot of history, right? One, you have the history of Heron. He wins his fourth in a row. No one, no one has done that ever in the history of the 200. He wins his fifth Daytona race, which ties in with the legend, Russell, Scott Russell and Miguel Duhamel.

They're the only two to ever win five. So now you have three, cause Heron's won a fifth. And I wouldn't bet against Heron winning a couple of more before he winds up hanging up his helmet. So he may be the person who owns that record forever. You know, then you get Kayla on the podium at the 200, first, which is the most correct way to say it in this thing, the first woman female, I'm not sure, to be on the podium.

And the part I loved about it was she was in the hunt all race. She was in it to win it from the very beginning. She was always right there. Yes, luck plays a little bit of part in it, but to finish first, first you must finish. And that podium is a hundred percent on merit.

Her and her team deserve an amazing amount of credit to be able to put her there. She took advantage of it when she had to. And by all means, Bender probably realistically thinking since this guy's a Moto two rider, had been a Moto three rider, you would think that he coming to America was just thinking, not that he's thinking this, but you'd think, wow, that guy's going to put it on her and take that last podium spot. And she fought back and outfoxed him in the draft to take it. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

If anybody deserved rider of the race, I got to give it to her. It was just one of the most amazing things I've seen in a long time in racing. I think it bodes well for her in the series. Hopefully she'll be able to carry this momentum on forward. She looks like she's on a great bike.

She's on probably a very competitive Ducati. I'll say that. And so this could be really, really, really fantastic racing to watch and see how many more podiums that she actually winds up getting. That's how I see it. No, she looks fantastic.

I mean, what I found interesting was she didn't look like she was trying. She had no trouble keeping up with everybody. At least she never appeared to be having any moments. She was never looking loose. PJ looked pretty loose in the qualifying, in the practice.

He was pushing that thing hard and it looked a little unsettled. Kayla just looks super smooth and deceptively smooth. It's like, is she going fast? Yeah, she's going really fast. So I share all the same sentiment.

I think it's very exciting. She's on Melissa Paris's team. That's correct, I believe. I believe so, yes. I believe that's correct.

And yeah, she looks like she's got a lot of road racing future ahead of her, which is really exciting. I mean, I do really find it encouraging that there are finally a few females racing in the classes, on equal machinery, without any special, it's not a women's class. She's just racing in the supersport class. It's fantastic. And obviously she has all the business being there.

She has... 100%. Yeah. 100%. So with that, that's your podium.

Bender takes fourth. DiMario is fifth. Then it's Dominic Doyle, Blake Lewis in seventh. Josh Hayes is there in eighth. When the ninth was Ryder Davis.

Tenth is then Gus Rodio. So that's your top 10 of the people in the Daytona 200. And that takes care of the Moto America racing from the World Center of Racing in Daytona. We should say this about Peter Hickman, because Peter Hickman has come over a few times and had two very, very big crashes in practice. He had one of the most wicked high sides there at turn one.

When I first saw it, I thought he was going to land on the wall on the inside there, but he didn't. But the first image was he was going to bang into that. And I think he really had trouble at turn one a lot there. So he did finish the race. He was seven laps down on a Triumph and finishing in 27.

So that's like someone else there just to talk about as a shout out. I think that's a name that more Moto Pod fans may be aware of in Peter Hickman. But I think Daytona is a one-off. There's really a lot of different things that happen down there. It's not a conventional racetrack per se, as you have the banking.

And there's really not much more than it's a drafting battle and it's a battle of smarts. But I am really curious to see how the season is going to play out when we get to Road Atlanta, which I believe is the next round in the series. Somewhere in April, I think. Don't have the calendar pulled up here in front of me, but I can look quickly and see if I can find it. April 17th.

No, second round is March 27th. Yeah, but that's just talent. That's just talent come. Yep, that's just talent come. Yep, doesn't count.

April 17th will be round one for the Superbikes there. And so I'm looking forward to that one. Any other final words before we get out of here, Jake? Yeah, I mean, I just want to say a little bit more about these road racers who, Isle of Man TT competitors, Peter Hickman and his teammate Davy Todd both came over and both had pretty bad times. So that was kind of, I feel for those guys.

It's a lot for them to come over and they both, especially Davy Todd got hurt in practice and didn't even get to- He broke a femur, didn't he? Yes, I saw a broken leg. I didn't see which bone, but he had multiple injuries. It looked pretty bad. And Peter Hickman just, he had a crash.

I mean, he had a crash in the qualifying in turn one, ground the case down on the side of the engine, dumped a bunch of oil. I mean, it slid for a long ways just on one side and just ground through the case. And then he crashed in the time attack again in turn one and he had a high side, big high side. The bike flipped and went every which way. And somehow he walked away.

So that was very lucky, but his triumph, man, his triumph had a rough weekend in Florida. So yeah, and then Davy Todd, I mean, that guy, it started very, very badly. It was a very, very auspicious start to his weekend when on Thursday, Josh Hayes took him out on lap one, right as they were starting their practice on Thursday. I was like, oh, this does not bode well. Like, come on, Josh, what are you doing?

It wasn't a major one, but it was notable. Nobody got hurt, but it was like, geez, this is not starting out well. And then he, yeah, then he crashed in the first qualifying session and got hurt. And that was the end of it. So my sympathies to Davy Todd for coming over and having a hard time, it's gotta be pretty demoralizing and it's gonna affect his season too.

So yeah, it's a possibility that he doesn't make the Northwest or the TT, which is really sad to see. It's really, really sad. Oh, well, Jake, I think we have babbled on long enough for the racing and from Daytona for sure. So it's late here on the East Coast for me. I'm sure you're hungry and you want some dinner.

So I'm gonna tell everybody just to ride safe. And until next time, see ya. All right, bye, great talking to you.