Danny Eslick Wins the Pole and Rolex Watch for Daytona 200, Jake Johnson Wins Daytona Short Track R2

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Danny Eslick #69-Now #1 in Daytona SportBike-while qualifying for the Mid Ohio round of AMA Formula Xtreme on his MPTracing.com GSX-R600 for the 2005 event. Eslick won the pole and the Rolex watch for the Daytona 200 late yesterday for tonight's running of the classic road race.
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'Jersey' Jake Johnson's #1-now #5 for 2010-American Suzuki/Parts Unlimited RMZ450 sits under the pit awning at Springfield for the Labor Day weekend running of the short track race in Sept. 2007. Johnson ran away and hid in last night's 2nd round short track at the new Daytona Short Track stadium while riding a Honda for this year's short track & TT campaign.
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Danny Eslick added further credibility to his '09 AMA Daytona SportBike Championship by winning the pole for tonight's Daytona 200. Qualifying ran last night for tonight's classic and Eslick qualified only .002 seconds ahead of Martin Cardenas, his last year'r rival for the championship. Both riders were GSX-R600-mounted for the DSB class pole session, Eslick being sponsored on the Richie Morris Racing machine by Geico Powersports and Cardenas by Monster Energy on his M4 Suzuki team.
Congrats to Danny and we look forward to tonight's race which will be shown tape delayed on Speed TV at 9:00 P.M. EST. You can read the official story here thanks to http://www.cyclenews.com/:
http://cyclenews.com/articles/road-racing/2010/03/04/eslick-wins-a-rolexd
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And just outside the legendary tri-oval, Jake Johnson, riding the #5 Zanotti Racing Honda CRF450 ran away and hid to win by 1.7 seconds-a half a lifetime in short track racing-to take his fifth Daytona Short Track win over Kenny Coolbeth and Jared Mees, both Honda mounted.
Although the AMA Live Timing and Scoring was still suffering the same sad, not available problems from the previous night's race, the Twitter feed as shown from Wednesday night's post was most effective in keeping up with the lap action for us land locked fans here in Indy. Several mentions of this over at the forum on http://www.flattrack.com/ brought the same type of reaction as would be expected, especially after it was stated from Wednesday at Daytona by Mike Kidd that they were working on the software issues. I guess that didn't pan out as planned, unfortunately.
We here at Stu's Shots hope that Mike and team AMA Flat Track now have plenty of time to get this issue dealt with before the next round in Arizona in May. One thing about the former National #7 (and before winning the '81 GNC title #72), Mr. Kidd will get it straightened around as he knows the importance of running a first class series and program, and he knows without a doubt what the fans need and want as well, whether you are at the track or not.
Congrats to Jake and the Zanotti Racing crew! This could be a great year for them as this is the team that took 1979 AMA Grand National Champion Steve Eklund to the title, and they have a good program lined up for this year.
You can read the official story here, again thanks to http://www.cyclenews.com/.
This event will be shown on Speed TV, as well, on Sunday, Mar. 7th at 6:00 P.M. EST and is supposed to be comprised of highlights from both events with some final action thrown in as well: http://cyclenews.com/articles/flat-track/2010/03/04/johnson-takes-fifth-daytona-win

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Thanks for dropping in, and if you can't catch tonight's tape delayed action of the Daytona 200 on Speed TV you can follow it 'Live' via the live timing and scoring link on the left side column from the AMA. The road race side DID get their software problems worked out as it worked great for all racing yesterday and was a great tool for those of us not in cold, but sunny Daytona.
Also, AMA Superbike race two is this afternoon at 4:00 P.M. EST and you can follow live on the timing link for it as well, and it will be shown with yesterday's first round action tomorrow on Speed TV beginning at 10:30 P.M. EST, providing the supercross race doesn't run over. I'm pretty sure it's delayed as well so shouldn't be a problem, but to be safe you might want to add in for overrun time in case you are tivoing the show.
Take care, and we'll have more on this afternoon's Superbike race and tonight's 200 before the weekend is done!
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