Peter and I had a busy weekend, so we’re just now sitting down to watch the Daytona 200. Consider this the opening AMA race stream of consciousness entry.
Pre-race:
ARRGGGHHHH!! WHAT in GOD’S NAME is crawling on Ben Bostrom’s face? Why do the otherwise perfectly attractive Bostrom brothers believe that these sideburns are a good idea? Someone close to them needs to take them aside and gently suggest a razor.
Is it just me, or does Matt Mladin look like Johnny Depp this year? This isn’t a bad thing. Bostrom brothers: note the lack of sideburns.
The Miguel Duhamel interview is cracking me up. I think this is the most I’ve ever heard him talk — such a cute Canadian accent, yah der you betcha!
Yay, warm up lap! I’m sitting here eating pizza and yelling “WOOOO!! BIKE WEEK!”. Peter keeps glancing over at me, looking somewhat worried.
Race:
WOOOO! BIKE WEEK!!
Lap 1: OK, if this is how the season’s going to be, either Honda or Ducati needs to change the bike color. We’re trying to figure out the top three riders. “Honda Honda Ducati?” “No, Ducati Honda Ducati.” “No, that can’t be….oh! Honda Ducati Honda!”
Lap 6: Looking to be a good race already. Lots of passes…mostly, of course, during the commercials. Heaven forbid Speed Channel ever show us a replay.
Lap 7: Why can’t Speed Channel figure out how to pronounce Miguel Duhamel’s name?
Lap 10: They’re talking about how one of the teams (didn’t catch which) didn’t test their tires on 18-20 continuous laps before the Daytona. This seems like a poor game plan.
Lap 12: Wow, Jake Zemke’s doing well. He’s up to 4th now.
Lap 15: If the race is 57 laps long, why is Eric Bostrom pitting already? That doesn’t really bode well. Three stops is pretty darn often. He can’t count on 15 laps per tire during the regular season…
Lap 22: Man, poor Ben Bostrom. This pit stop is taking forever…that chain was loose as anything. We noticed it right as the commentator mentioned it…I’m surprised that he don’t have radio communication with his pit crew — it sounded as though the delay was partially due to the crew assuming that he needed a new tire, not a chain adjustment.
Lap 25: And Ben’s back into the pits. Ugh. Poor guy.
Lap 33: Seems like almost everyone is taking a 3-pit stop strategy. That seems odd.
Lap 34: They’re talking to Ben Bostrom now — they’re still not sure what happened to his bike. He says that he may have busted his clutch off the starting line. 🙁 He seems like such a nice guy; it’s too bad about his sideburns.
Lap 35: Miguel, Jake, Matt. A good lineup.
Lap 36: Ugh, now it’s Matt, Eric, Miguel. Christ, I think Speed Channel intentionally takes commercial breaks when the leaders are about to swap places.
Lap 40: Whee, Miguel coming into pit row at 150mph. Zoom! I wish I had a team of guys to fuel up my bike and swap my tires within 12 seconds.
Lap 43: Yikes, another Bostrom with an unexpected pit stop. Kinda hard to tell what’s going on, but it seems like he was getting oil on the rear tire — it was smoking like a mudderfudder during decel. Peter and I had just been talking about colored smoke this afternoon; I was mentioning that oil farts out white smoke, and now we got a good demonstration.
Lap 45: They just mentioned that the 10th place racer gets $4000. That’s the first time in my years of watching racing that the commentators mentioned the purse.
Lap 48: Matt, Aaron, Miguel.
Lap 49: Yikes! Yates is down! And he just walked up and kicked privateer Anthony Fania in the butt! Ha! Now they’re fighting! Woah, Anthony, that’s not a family gesture there. Oh man. Aaron Yates kicks my ass. That man is incapable of not being fined. The crash replay was astonishing — it looked as though Anthony Fania went down and was sucked into Yate’s rear tire. *shudder*
Lap 50: Matt, Miguel, Jake. Time to get crazy on worn tires. I’m still laughing at Yates headbutting Fania and getting the wank-off gesture.
Lap 52: Peter and I are still talking about Aaron Yates. “He even looks a little like Larry Ellison,” says Peter. That’s a little Silicon Valley humor there.
Lap 54: Ricky Orlando: 47 years old, wrecked at the beginning, and is still in 6th place. Damn.
Lap 56: We think Miguel’s setting Jake up…. Woah, photo finish! Who came in 2nd?
Victory Lane: Matt Mladin, Jake Zemke, Miguel Duhamel. It’ll be a fun season, watching Jake go up against Eric and Ben.
Post-race:
I don’t think the commentators are buying this whole “3 pit stops” strategy. They keep asking Matt about it as though he didn’t just win by a mile.
Hee! Jake looks as though he doesn’t quite believe that he came in second. Aww, he’s giving his little Academy Awards speech. 🙂 I think the newbies are the only ones that plug the sponsors.
Miguel’s making a lot of excuses for that third place finish. Like that’s anything to be ashamed of.
We’re looking forward to watching the CBR1000RRs during the regular season. They really tore off the line at the beginning of the race. Plus, Jake and Miguel: no sideburns.
The interview with Jack Pfeifer is awesome. $6500 for 4th place…seems a little low. Though I guess if you get ten 1st place finishes, you might almost make Bay Area wages. I think I’d rather ride a motorcycle around than sit behind a desk. Hrm.
Oh, woo, they’re going to talk about the Aaron Yates fiasco du jour. Woah, even the pit crew guys are fighting. It’ll be interesting to see, as the pit crew was saying, how the AMA is going to handle it.
From CycleNews.com: “According to Kerry Graeber, vice president, director of communications for AMA Pro Racing, a decision will be made on the Aaron Yates/Anthony Fania altercation sometime next week.
‘We spent the last couple of hours talking to everyone and we have tape,’ Graeber said. ‘It will be reviewed and a decision will be made this week on what we will do. We will address it on Monday when we get to the office.'”
More on the ‘altercation’ from Superbikeplanet.com.
So, that was the 2004 Daytona 200. Let the season begin!