Bostrom bags Daytona 200 pole

By John Hopkins

DAYTONA BEACH, FL -- Ben Bostrom grabbed pole position for the Daytona 200 in a dramatic SuperPole qualifying session at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday evening.

The Team Graves Yamaha rider was the last of the 10 SuperPole challengers on the track aboard his Yamaha YZF-R6 and turned a lap at one minute, 50.240 seconds (115.929 mph) to snatch the top spot from the Bruce Rossmeyer's Daytona Racing/RMR Buell 1125R of Danny Eslick. Eslick had recorded a 1:50.352 moments earlier.

"This bike's pretty special; it makes up for the rider's mistakes," said Bostrom after earning his second Daytona 200 pole. "I hit the brakes going into the kink and I thought I gave it away right there."

Jason DiSalvo qualified third fastest for Friday night's opening round of the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Championship at 1:50.363 on the M4 Suzuki GSX-R600 and Jamie Hacking was fourth fastest on his Monster Energy Attack Kawasaki ZX-6R with a 1:50.466.

The SuperPole format was the first for the Daytona 200 and likely the first in motorcycle racing history to be run under the lights.

Bostrom, who had also been quickest in the morning qualifying session that determined the 10 SuperPole runners, said the track became slicker in the evening conditions.

"It wasn't really that cool," said Bostrom, who turned a 1:49.094 in the morning, "but the track seemed to grease up quite a bit. The bike was squirming around a lot."

Temperatures for the evening session were around the 60-degree Fahrenheit mark.

After turning the second fastest time in the morning Eslick was the next-to-last rider out in SuperPole. Although he wasn't quickest in any of the splits around the 3.55-mile track he grabbed the top spot from DiSalvo in the run from the final chicane to the start/finish line.

"The lap was pretty good," Eslick said. "I didn't have any big moments except for a wheelie out of the chicane and I think that hurt me a bit."

Hacking was the only rider to improve on his morning time. The Kawasaki veteran had only just scraped into SuperPole with the 10th best lap, a 1:50.517.

Josh Hayes was fifth quickest with a time of 1:50.520 on his Team Graves Yamaha YZF-R6 and Martin Cardenas took sixth with an identical time on an M4 Suzuki GSX-R600. Cardenas was quickest through the second and third splits but lost ground in the final section of the track, from the chicane to start/finish.

Calgary's Chris Peris was a disappointing 10th aboard the Erion Racing Honda CBR600RR with a time of 1:52.160. He had been seventh in the morning session at 1:50.338.

"It definitely didn't go how I planned," said the Canadian ace. "Sometimes you push too hard for that one flier and I didn't want to overdo it, so I started to back off a bit on the corner entrances and focused on getting good drives out. That's not the way to do it. I should have been more aggressive. I was too tentative in the turns."

Peris was optimistic of his package for the race, however.

"We've been working on a race set-up," he explained. "We've run a lot of long stints and setting our best times at the end of those runs. And the bike hooks up well in the draft."

Montreal's Miguel Duhamel, bidding for a record sixth win in the Daytona 200, will start Friday's race from the 13th grid spot on the Suzuki/Blackfoot/Picotte Motorsports Suzuki GSX-R600 after recording a lap at 1:50.701 Thursday morning.

Alan Schmidt of Kamloops, BC qualified 40th with a time of 1:53.714 on his Latus Motor Racing Buell 1125R, Mississauga, ON's Matt McBride was 45th at 1:54.754 riding the Vallely Racing/Riders Choice Suzuki GSX-R600, North Bay, ON racer Jean Paul Tache qualified 59th aboard the Four Feathers Racing Yamaha YZF-R6 with a 1:56.519 and Vancouver's Kevin Boisvert set the 78th best time of 2:02.517 riding the Bayside Performance Suzuki GSX-R600.

Friday night's Daytona SportBike season opener starts at 8:00 p.m. It will be preceded by a two-hour SunTrust MOTO-GT race at 4:00 p.m.

Daytona SportBike SuperPole Results
1. Ben Bostrom, Yamaha YZF-R6, 1:50.240
2. Dan Eslick, Buell 1125R, 1:50.352
3. Jason DiSalvo, Suzuki GSX-R600, 1:50.363
4. Jamie Hacking, Kawasaki ZX-6R, 1:50.466
5. Josh Hayes, Yamaha YZF-R1, 1:50.520
6. Martin Cardenas, Suzuki GSX-R600, 1:50.520
7. Josh Herrin, Yamaha YZF-R6, 1:51.296
8. Jake Zemke, Honda CBR600RR, 1:51.328
9. Dane Westby, Yamaha YZF-R6, 1:51.592
10. Chris Peris, Honda CBR600RR, 1:52.160