Ducati team wins Moto-GT opener

By John Hopkins

DAYTONA BEACH, FL -- The No. 20 Wisconsin Racing Ducati 848 of Jeff Purk and Calvin Martinez won the opening round of the AMA Pro SunTrust Moto-GT season at Daytona International Speedway on Friday.

The pair took the lead just 15 minutes from the end of the two-hour race when the leading No. 14 Crozier Motorsports Triumph Daytona 675 ran out of gas in turn six. The Ducati then survived a quick stop for a splash of fuel to take the victory.

Second place went to the No. 37 Old Pros Racing Kawasaki ZX-6R of Paul Schwemmer and North Bay, ON's Jean Paul Tache, which finished one minute, 33.814 seconds behind the winner.

Third overall and winner of the GT2 class was the No. 9 Pair-A-Nines Kawasaki 650R of Jay Springsteen and Nick Cummings.

The No. 20 Ducati completed 58 laps of the 5.65km (3.51-mile) Long Course for an average speed of 101.5 miles per hour.

"We spent the past three days trying to figure out a fuel strategy," said Martinez. "We decided no matter what we were going to do a splash and go and not risk anything. We ran out of fuel a couple of times last year and that cost us."

For the first half of the race the lead was disputed between the No. 41 Liberty Waves Buell 1125R of Eric Haugo and Eric Pinson and the No. 69 TeamHurtByAccident.com Suzuki GSX-R600 shared by Armando Ferrer and Rodolfo Ramirez.

But the No. 69 Suzuki retired with a damaged radiator, caused by the rad rubbing against the tube used to jack the bike up on pit stops. Then the No. 41 Buell lost three minutes in the pits when a rear tire change during a routine stop went awry as a brake pad fell into the caliper.

That left the No. 14 Triumph leading the No. 20 Ducati by almost a minute. The Crozier team was preparing for its final stop and a rider switch from Crozier to Caudill at the end of lap 49 when the bike ran out of gas halfway around the track.

"We were doing the same amount of laps as the previous stint," Crozier said. "Then coming out of the Horseshoe it sputtered. Everything was going good. We were just rolling along."

The team recovered to finish fifth in class and eighth overall.

Tache was a late replacement for John Ashmead on the Old Pros team and rode the opening and closing stints on the Kawasaki. He surprised the team with a stop for a splash of fuel with just a few minutes to go, although the bike was safey in the runner-up spot.

"The warning light came on, and I don't know this bike," he explained. "I didn't want to play games so I decided to come in. Normally I would give a tap of my head going past the pits but I didn't get a chance to that time."

The No. 41 Buell also had fuel drama in the late stages when Haugo ran out just entering the pits. He and team member Jamie Spinks pushed the bike almost half the length of the pit lane and the team salvaged third in the GT1 class and fourth overall. The No. 41 bike easily led the most laps of the race at 26.

The No. 9 Kawasaki and the No. 77 Touring Sport Ducati PS1000LE of Frank Shockley and Brad Phillips battled for the GT2 class lead through to the first routine stops, after which the Kawasaki pulled away to win by a lap over the Ducati.

"The last few laps I was trying to back it down a bit because I had a little chatter in the front end," Springsteen said. "Nick did a good job. He struggled a little but he hasn't rode a road race bike in a few years."

Cummings' last road race experience was with the Pair-A-Nines team in the 2006 Daytona 8-Hour SunTrust MOTO-ST Series event.

The No. 77 Ducati took second in class and sixth overall.

Third in GT2 went to the No. 34 Cycle Dynamics Kawasaki 650R of Dustin Dominguez and Les Banta. The 60-year-old Banta was a late replacement for Kyle Martin in the team and only rode two laps -- the minimum required -- while Dominguez handled the rest of the race.