Photos from Ruthless Racing Inc.'s post Well hear it is....the 78th running of the Daytona 200 is in the record books. As most of you know it was a long trip from Deep Cove to Daytona International Speedway, over 5400km!! We had qualified in 24th position with a field of 70 riders. My grid position was 8th row on the outside. The Ruthless Crew had my Trev Deeley Motorcycles Yamaha R6 ready to rock and roll. At last years Daytona 200 the Ruthless Crew had the fastest pit stops!! So they had to live up to there reputations!! We gridded up all 70 of us, it would be a two wave start. The green flag dropped and we all tore off into turn one. I didn’t get the best of starts and it took me a few laps to get going. No excuse other than ring rust. The first 19 laps flew bye, then I got the signal from Mike on the pit board it was time to come in for the first of two scheduled pit stops. I came railing into the pits at over 160mph!! It took every bit of brakes to get her stopped and into the hands of Glen who is the catch man!! Once again the Ruthless Crew killed it on the pit stop. I came into the pits in 22nd position and with a super fast refuel and tire change I was back out in 20 seconds and in 17th position!! Hell ya boys!! The second stint flew by! I just put my head down and did my best to just pound out fast laps. There was a lot of traffic, and the closing speeds on some of the competitors further back in the field was a little sketchy at times. I had carved my way up to 14th position. On lap 38 again I got the pit board signal to pit in. The second stop was even faster than the first, 19 seconds!! I came back out of the pits in 12th and started charging for the home stretch. Leaving the pits i was having some issues with my fingers on my left hand. The three fingers I had trimmed down at the NW200 last year had pretty much stopped working....I could close my hand but I had almost zero feeling in my fingers at all. All the races I have done since shortening my fingers have been shorter races 30-45 minutes. Daytona being 200 miles and close to one hour and forty five minutes long is getting into territory my fingers haven’t had to deal or experience yet. Well it turns out I still have some work to do on my fingers and hand. I wasn’t overly concerned about my hand but had to really focus on using the clutch going into turn one, as you enter turn one at close to 170mph in 6th gear pinned and down shift all the way to 2nd gear. Also off the back straightaway heading into the chicane, another spot where you are making 3-4 back shifts. I had made my way into 11th and was quickly catching 10th place, also I had stretched out a 7-10 second gap on 12th. I was closing in on 10th place on lap 52 of 57 when out came the red flag.....FAK! Pulling back into the pits I was really really struggling to pull in the clutch to down shift to neutral. Again I wasn’t all that worried because I figured that was it race over....To my surprise and everybody else’s they decided for a complete restart! Oh shit! I did my best to work my fingers to try my best to get some sort of feeling back into my hand. But nothing seemed to work.... we gridded back up and I was center on the 4th Row. I was pretty anxious about the restart as I couldn’t feel my fingers in my left hand to release the clutch. To my surprise I got a decent launch even with a small wheelie. But being this was a four lap sprint race to win the Daytona 200 EVERYONE went banzai into turn one! Just my luck there was a pile up right in front of me, causing me to have to run way wide to avoid the pile up. Loosing about 5 positions I dropped to 16th or 17th position. I quickly battled back to 12th but on the last lap I lost another position going into the chicane as I missed a backshift. So after 200 miles and starting in 24th position we ended up finishing in 13th position. Not bad considering the field...but certainly not the result I was looking for as I have finished the last 5 Daytona 200’s inside of the top 10. Regardless the team did fantastic and my boys Crew Chief Jon Cornwell, Thomas Morin, Glen Veatch, Dave Estok, Jim Dickenson, Mike Mayer and even the water boy Mike McComb all KILLED IT. For the second year in a row our little Canadian Ruthless Crew has the FASTEST pit stops out of every team on the Grid✊🏻👍🏻🤙🏻👊🏻 So proud and stoked for the boys who work so hard for me building a bike and doing everything in there power to give me a great motorcycle and the support to go out and battle with the big boys.
But....but.....going with the theme of my life for the last year, the celebrations came to a bone smashing HALT. Turns out in post race inspections our R6 failed.... it kills me to even wright this but we and I stress “WE” FAKKED UP. Of all the things to FAK up it’s embarrassing to even say this but we failed tech and was disqualified for having the wrong air filter. There really is no excuse.....just an absolutely AVOIDABLE FAK UP. Completely embarrassing for a team who has raced 11 times in the Daytona 200. So I get to think about our FAK up for the next 5500 kilometer drive back to Deep Cove empty handed and feeling like a dull tool. This will be a tough one to live down, especially bounce back from. I have never been a “why me” person but damm I couldn’t buy luck if it was on a silver platter in front of me. But as I have said before and I’m sure I will say it again “that’s Racing”
Massive shout out to my Ruthless Racing Team and everyone who has helped in some way shape or form. Also thanks to all my sponsors and the Canadian Fans who sent me so many kind messages over the last couple of days.
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