Confusion in Daytona, Florida lead many race fans, and racers with some doubt as to who won, and whether not a full race had in fact occurred for this year’s Daytona 200. In a press release issued by the AMA, the sequence of events that led to the 6-lap sprint to the finish are as follows:
The lighting system that illuminated the chicane that leads into NASCAR turn 3 experienced a failure on or about lap 36, which brought out the “safety” (AKA pace) car. During this caution an unnamed rider collided with Graves Yamaha’s Tommy Aquino, causing Aquino to go down, which brought out the red flag, idling the field for nearly a half-hour. After a few warm-up laps behind the safety car, racing resumed only to to go back under caution when M4 Suzuki’s Kris Turner went down in the Horseshoe. Racing resumed in earnest on lap 49 and did not go back to yellow for the remainder of the race.
Motorsports Editor of the Daytona News Journal, reports that the the reason that the scoring tower read two laps shy of the 57 required for a full race distance, was that the warmup laps between the red flag and the last caution should have been counted as race laps but weren’t, resulting in confusion amongst the front-runners, not the least of whom was Jason DiSalvo, who thought that his GSXR-600 Daytona Sportbike had the oomph necessary on the top-end to make a bid for the lead.
AMA race director Colin Fraser said that the discrepancy was a mistake and would not make excuses for the foul-up.
Lastly, Paradigm Racing’s Barrett Long, after a post-race protest, was given credit for a lap that was not counted during the red flag period which elevated him to 6th place ahead of Chaz Davies. Continue reading for the racing results.
