American Honda’s Jake Zemke scored his first win in the Daytona 200 on a sun-filled Saturday afternoon at Daytona International Speedway, with Erion Honda’s Josh Hayes giving the Honda CBR600RR a one-two finish with a close second in the Formula Xtreme race. The win, in the 65th annual Daytona 200, was especially sweet for Zemke, who’s finished second and third at Daytona, but never first. This completes his set of trophies, he said from the podium.
“Everybody knows about Daytona 200,” Zemke said after beating Hayes by 1.562 seconds. “It’s something as a kid, that you always look at the names on the list of the winners of the Daytona 200 by Honda and it’s a who’s who list. I’m proud to put my name up there.”
Zemke’s fortune coincided with the misfortune of his prolific teammate Miguel Duhamel. From a new lap record pole position, the reigning class champion built a 12 second lead before losing the rear end and high-siding in turn one on the 44th of 68 laps. Undeterred, the resolute Duhamel picked up his lightly damaged Honda CBR600RR and rejoined the fray, now second to Zemke. “I was still in the hunt. I still had a shot at it,” Duhamel said. “The bike was good enough and I was still able to pound out some pretty good lap times.”
When an accident brought out the pace car on the 54th lap, Duhamel was in the perfect position to fight for a historic sixth win. But a mistake by race officials put Duhamel, and not race leader Zemke, directly behind the pace car. It meant the French-Canadian, who now calls Las Vegas home, had to make up almost an entire lap when the field was released.
Fighting through the pain, Duhamel finished fifth in his only Formula Xtreme appearance of the year. He and teammate Zemke will now concentrate on winning the AMA Superbike Championship. That quest began earlier Saturday morning with Duhamel finishing third in the 15-lap Superbike season-opener on the Honda CBR1000RR. He ran just behind the race leaders and fought off the challenges of former World Superbike Champion Neil Hodgson to finish on the podium.
Teammate Zemke suffered arm pump early in the race and bravely hung on to finish eighth. A session with his physiotherapist during the two hours between the Superbike and Formula Xtreme races helped alleviate the condition. The Superbike race was won by Suzuki’s Mat Mladin from teammate Ben Spies.
Jake Zemke, Formula Xtreme, 1stI don’t know what to say. I got second the first year and third last year and there was one spot on the box that I’ve got to get. We’re there. There was some confusion with the pace car thing. They are supposed to let the leader get to the front and they never did. My pit board went from plus-4 (seconds) to plus 25 the next lap. I thought Josh (Hayes) must have stopped for gas. I’m cruising along and I come around and my pit board said 1.5 or .5 (seconds), but my eyes opened up about this big and I said, ‘There ain’t no way, as my friend Nicky Hayden would put it, and I put my head down. Josh was right there. That board said the last two or three lap, 0.5. Luckily, it never said, .0. It was great.
Miguel Duhamel, Formula Xtreme, 5thComing out of turn one, I’ll be the first one to admit it – I know what happened, but I’m not too sure why. The rear end just kicked out violently. It was the last stop of the stint on that tire, I don’t know if I hit some debris, a tear-off. I was tracking and powering on as I did every lap, but it just snapped so abruptly. I couldn’t believe how it got so far. I went to the lock trying to save it. It was like it got a shot of 1000cc of power. I’ll say it’s definitely the bonehead move of the world. A 10-second lead at Daytona with half the race done, you don’t do stuff like that. But that being said, the race was still pretty young and I didn’t want to start slacking off and give these guys a chance, but it caught me off guard.
Jake Zemke, Superbike, 8thI have no one to blame but myself. I couldn’t hold on anymore - my arms pumped up. I think I figured out why. I realized that every time I came off the corner and was accelerating, my ass was sliding to the back of the seat and I was holding on with my arms. That’s no excuse. The bike was awesome today. I worked my way through the guys real fast and at that point, from where I had come from, I kept looking to see where Mat [Mladin] and Ben [Spies] were, and I could see that I was catching them. I’m just disappointed in myself. That’s all there is to it. The bike was good. It [the arm pump] started this morning. I tried a new set of leathers and they were a bit tight and my arms pumped up a little bit, and maybe they didn’t have enough time to recover in between.
Miguel Duhamel, Superbike, 3rdMy main goal here was to get points, maximum points. Winning would have been great, but realistically top three was what we were shooting for. I rode a B- race. I didn’t ride good in the beginning; I was a little too soft. I let them get away and the bike was good. At the end we were running the same times almost and could have been there for a win, but third is okay. The championship is our main goal, so we’re happy with third.
Daytona 2001. Jake Zemke (Honda)
2. Josh Hayes (Honda)
3. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha)
4. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha)
5. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
6. Aaron Gobert (Honda)
7. Geoff May (Suzuki)
8. Eric Wood (Suzuki)
9. Blake Wood (Suzuki)
10. Will Gruy (Yamaha)
Daytona Superbike1. Mat Mladin (Suzuki)
2. Ben Spies (Suzuki)
3. Miguel Duhamel (Honda)
4. Neil Hodgson (Ducati)
5. Tommy Hayden (Kawasaki)
6. Aaron Yates (Suzuki)
7. Ben Bostrom (Ducati)
8. Jake Zemke (Honda)
9. Jason Pridmore (Suzuki)
10. Jake Holden (Suzuki)
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