Buell has fastest lap at Daytona practice

Yes the liter Vee-Twins race with the 600SS bikes from Japan. Seems to me like the Vees are cheating in the corners with 70 to 80 ft lbs of torque vs. 40 to 60 from the I4s. Who makes these rules???

On as side note, local Central Texan Ty Howard had a front tire blow up at speed!

Updated: Eslick Leads First AMA Daytona SportBike Practice In Florida News Article // RoadracingWorld.com

The Buells certainly had some grunt too them, and they sound fantastic live. But of course since we're on a Yamaha forum, I'm happy thy the yammys won.

Eslick and his 1125R were pretty impressive during the beginning laps of the race. I really wished the battle for the lead between him, Ben Bostrum, and Josh Hayes would have continued to the end.

In the pre-race coverage, the announcer said the Buell would run the entire 200 mile race on the same front tire. No doubt it was due to the combination of the ZTL brakes, low unsprung weight and the fact that the Buell's torque probably lifts most of the load off the front wheel coming out of the turns anyway!

It was odd how many riders didnt change the front. Even some of the yamahas didn't. This was my 6th 200 and I've never seen them do that. I think it had a lot to do with the cooler air/track temps.

On a side note, It was cool to watch them go back to the old configuration, using nascar turns 2 and 3.

Hellgate said:

Yes the liter Vee-Twins race with the 600SS bikes from Japan. Seems to me like the Vees are cheating in the corners with 70 to 80 ft lbs of torque vs. 40 to 60 from the I4s. Who makes these rules???

Click to expand...

Americans make those rules.
It was the same in the 1960's at Daytona.....H-D was allowed to race their 750's against the 500's. Triumph still kicked their V-twin side-valved butts.

Not Buell related but race related.

The best view


The view down to the normal seats


The SpeedTV crew


The wifey with some guy named Nicky :rockon:

^^^ Very, very cool! Someday I'll make it to one.

Thanks very much for posting the photos!

Nicky is a pu$$y. Can't ride for crap!

fragchild said:

It was odd how many riders didnt change the front. Even some of the yamahas didn't. This was my 6th 200 and I've never seen them do that. I think it had a lot to do with the cooler air/track temps.

On a side note, It was cool to watch them go back to the old configuration, using nascar turns 2 and 3.

Click to expand...

Good point, I thought that odd too. I think you're right and it was the cool temps of night vs. the hot day temps. The night format was pretty cool. :thumbup: It does mess with your depth perception however. I raced in Phoenix at night a few times and didn't like it. That's were/when I got hit.

The old config is better, the riders all seemed to comment on that. Bostrom out of the chicane was AMAZING! What a stud, talk about DRIVE!

I wonder what kind of times the old 500cc and 750cc two strokes ran, ie: TZ750s, etc. The Superbikes the day before were running about nine to 10 seconds faster then Daytona class that ran on TV, 1:38/1:40 vs. 1:49/1:50. I assume it was the same track.