(Above) Josh Herrin had the speed early on to possibly take the victory in Race 2, but faded back to finish a respectable third place.
(Below) This weekend at Infineon Raceway it was all the Jason DiSalvo show.
Latus Motors Jason DiSalvo emerged victorious in Sunday’s red-flagged Daytona Sportbike Race 2 at Infineon Raceway beating the RMR / Geico’s Danny Eslick and Monster Energy / Graves Motorsports Josh Herrin. This would be his third consecutive win in the class.
At the start of the race it was DiSalvo, Eslick, Herrin and Jake Holden battling and swapping positions constantly for a few laps. Holden would eventually lose out when he crashed in spectacular fashion with his bike cart wheeling across the dirt. He appeared uninjured.
A few laps later the race was interrupted when corner workers reported rain in a few corners. After a short delay the track was deemed dry enough for a restart of the race. Unfortunately for Holden AMA officials wouldn’t let him restart the race on his back-up machine.
It was much of the same when the race was restarted with DiSalvo, Herrin and Eslick taking turns at the front.
“We were running really well on the restart and I got a good start again,” said Herrin. “I tried to stay up there… I knew if Jason got by it would be hard to run with him. I cooked my tires trying to keep up with him. We’ll come back to Miller and fight for a win. My team worked really hard this weekend and I am grateful that I got to ride.”
However after DiSalvo got into the lead he slowly began opening up a gap and it was quite obvious that the 848cc V-Twin of the Ducati had a power advantage on the 600cc Inline-Fours. This left Herrin and Eslick to dual for second position and dual they did for a short while until Eslick passed him and then opened up a small but steadily increasing gap.
“The first start was good,” said Eslick. “I got off solid then Jake had his moment and fell down then the rain started to pickup. I think they made a good call taking a little break and restarting. We were all going back and forth. It was a lot of fun because yesterday was a pretty boring race. I just didn’t have anything for Jason his bike is working good for him. I could catch him in a few spots and he’d pull away. It’s going to be a tough season.”
Eslick started catching up to DiSalvo but would run out of laps. Finishing fourth was PJ Jacobsen while Vesrah Suzuki’s Corey West was in fifth.
Danny Eslick put in a hard charge in Race 2 and will be one to watch as the season goes on.
1. Jason DiSalvo (Ducati)
2. Danny Eslick (Suzuki)
3. Josh Herrin (Yamaha)
4. PJ Jacobsen (Ducati)
5. Cory West (Suzuki)
6. Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha)
7. Tommy Aquino (Yamaha)
8. Dane Westby (Yamaha)
9. Taylor Knapp Suzuki)
10. Paul Allison (Yamaha)
11. Fernando Amantini (Kawasaki)
12. Bryce Prince (Yamaha)
13. Tyler Ohara (Yamaha)
14. Santiago Villa (Suzuki)
15. Josh Galster (Yamaha)
