Martin Cardenas Doubles At Barber Motorsports Park and Wins 2010 AMA Daytona SportBike Championship

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Martin Cardenas on the #36 M4/EMGO/Pirelli/Ohlins-backed Suzuki GSX-R600 is shown during a very damp practice session for the AMA Formula Xtreme Series at Road America in June of 2008. This was the Colombian's first full year working with the M4 Suzuki team and he finished the season ranked 7th in the championship standings. 2009 was the first year for the new AMA Daytona SportBike Championship Series, and Cardenas won more races than eventual champ Danny Eslick, but unfortunately also had more DNF's and crashes.
The 2010 AMA Daytona SportBike Championship started off at Daytona, and for the second year in a row, under the Friday Night Lights. Unfortunately, Martin binned it on the first lap of the 200 mile race and started the season with a goose egg in the point standings on the #36 Monster Energy M4 Suzuki. He went on to do a great job this year in winning nine of 18 races to win the 2010 AMA Daytona SportBike Championship by 8 points over title rival and 2009 AMA Daytona SportBike Champion Danny Eslick. And it was also announced this last week he will be back for more with the M4 team for 2011 and 2012.
Great job Martin and congratulations!
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Martin Cardenas fought it out until the end, not only winning both races in the season finale round of the AMA Daytona SportBike Championship at Barber Motorsports Park, but clinching the 2010 AMA Daytona SportBike Championship in the process. Cardenas won his 8th and 9th races this weekend in the 18 race season, and took his #36 M4 Monster Energy Suzuki GSX-R600 to his first United States-based road racing championship in the process. The Columbian won the 2010 championship over '09 AMA DSB Champ Danny Eslick by 8 points, 405-397. Josh Herrin on the Graves Yamaha ended up third in the championship hunt with 377 points.
It was another exciting year of close racing between Cardenas, Eslick and Herrin, who among them won 17 of the 18 races. Bobby Fong on a Ducati won race one at VIR back in August. The class has seen some great racing since it's inception last year, with multi-brand racing and close finishes in virtually all rounds except for the season opener at Daytona, which for the most part is more of an endurance race compared to the other 17 races on the schedule.

You can check out the full results as well as the official write-up's on the races below.

And please join me in congratulating 2010 AMA Daytona SportBike Champion Martin Cardenas and the M4 Monster Energy Suzuki team for a damn fine year, and a damn fine year of racing at that! Great job guys!
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Motorcycle-USA.com's Matt Davidson has the story of race two this afternoon at Barber Motorsports Park in the AMA Daytona SportBike Championship:

http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/748/8034/Motorcycle-Article/2010-Daytona-SportBike-Barber-Race-2.aspx
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Cycle News.com's Henny Ray Abrams has the story on race one at the beautiful Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, AL. for the season finale of the AMA Daytona
SportBike Championship fight for 2010. Cardenas came into the final round third in the championship with seven wins in 16 races. Saturday's win helped him to grab the lead in the standings with only Sunday's race until the season end, and also gave him eight wins overall. Read about Saturday's day one action here:

http://www.cyclenews.com/articles/road-racing/2010/09/25/cardenas-wins-title-fight-tightens
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Here are the results of race one in the AMA Daytona SportBike class at Barber from yesterday afternoon thanks to AMA Pro Road Racing:

http://amaproracing.com/rr/events/results.cfm?year=2010&eid=2010011050&discipline=RR&class=DS&type=F&rnum=1&class_sort=all -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here are the results of race two in the AMA Daytona SportBike class from this afternoon at Barber from the folks at SuperBikePlanet.com:

http://superbikeplanet.com/2010/Sep/sp2/100926a.htm
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Here are the overall results for the AMA Superbike/AMA Daytona SportBike Championship weekend at Barber Motorsports Park from AMA Pro Road Racing:

http://results.amaproracing.com/pdfresults/rr/2010/10-barber/default.aspx
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