San Jose BMW team wins inaugural 8 Hours At Daytona
The San Jose BMW team made history at Daytona International
Speedway in Florida, USA, on Saturday, winning a dramatic
inaugural 8 Hours At Daytona. The race was the first event in the
SunTrust MOTO-ST Series and San Jose BMW completed 228 laps of
the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course.
Team riders Brian Parriott (California, USA), Stephane Mertens
(Belgium) and Nate Kern (New Jersey, USA) held on to take a
14.856-second victory on their No. 46 BMW R 1200 S over the M4
EMGO Suzuki SV1000S team of Michael Barnes, Geoff May and
Chris Ulrich, which had originally been the strong favourite to take
the inaugural victory at Daytona.
In addition to claiming the overall win, the San Jose BMW team also
took the victory in the Buell Motorcycle Company SuperSport Twins
(SST) class.
"Everything went
smoothly," Parriott said.
"The settings were
perfect; tyre wear was phenomenal and the times of our three riders
were all within a second of each other, and I think that won the
race for us."
The No. 32 Valley Racing Suzuki SV1000S ridden by Chuck Ivey,
Josh Day and Frank Trombino completed the podium overall in the
SST class, five laps behind the winners.
The San Jose BMW ran near the front from the start of the race and
found itself in a commanding lead after the No. 83 BMW Cycles
Daytona BMW R 1200 S of John Haner, Warwick Nowland and
Mike Ciccoto ran out of fuel on track with just over three hours
remaining in the race. The team did however recover to finish
fourth overall
The M4 EMGO Suzuki entry fought its way back from outside the top
10 after suffering a gearshift problem, but managed to get back up
into second place with an hour-and-a-half remaining and put on a
furious charge to catch the leading BMW.
The Suzuki, with May aboard, made its final pit stop for a splash of
fuel with 22 minutes to go and was trailing by just under 30
seconds. May then lapped quicker than the leading BMW as the laps
wound down, but was unable to erase the deficit.
"We knew the Suzuki had to refuel one more time, so we weren't too
worried," said Stefane Mertens of the closing laps. "The crew was
really fantastic and they made no mistakes."