Busy Weekend at Daytona International Speedway

It was an exciting weekend of racing at the famed Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla. as three major motorcycle racing events shared the spotlight with Daytona Bike Week.

AMSOIL, which is the Official Oil of Bike Week, was front and center in all of the weekend’s racing action. Starting on Thursday, Team AMSOIL road racer Larry Pegram took his Ducati bike to the number-two qualifying position for the AMA Pro Road Racing American Superbike class. Pegram raced in the lead for several laps of the 15-lap final before pushing his bike across the stripe in third, less than a second behind the winner.

On Friday, Pegram again was the number-two qualifier and was looking to better his results from the previous day. Pegram went head-to-head with five other bikes, this time finishing fifth, but just .87 seconds behind the leader.

"It was a good weekend and we had a lot of speed in this bike both days," said Pegram. "But we were struggling with grip on the high banked part of the track. We know we have the power to be competitive and we battled all weekend long."

The Daytona 200 featured the Daytona SportBike presented by AMSOIL class on Friday night. With temperatures about 15 degrees below normal, Josh Harrin pushed his Suzuki across the line first after a long duel with Dane Westby. SPEED aired the event live on Friday night.

On Saturday, the dirt was piled up and ready for the Daytona Supercross event. Also ready to race were Geico Powersports/AMSOIL/Honda riders Kevin Windham, Justin Barcia and Brett Metcalfe. In Supercross, Windham was solid all night long, finishing third in his heat race. In the final, K-Dub took a tough start in the 180-degree turn and came out of the first lap in eighth. From there, Windham pushed his Honda 450CRF around the tight track and moved all the way up to fourth before the checkered flag dropped. Just in front of him was Trey Canard, Windham's teammate who is running for Factory Honda this weekend in the 450 class (Canard rides for Team AMSOIL in the Lites West Coast Series, which is on hiatus).

In the Lites class, it was follow-the-teammate night for Team AMSOIL. Barcia and Metcalfe started seventh and eighth in the Lites final and had some work to do in front of them. The teammates went back and forth for much of the race with Barcia making a late move on a few riders, finally finishing fifth. Metcalfe finished seventh.

Sunday meant more Supercross, this time from the amateurs. The Ricky Carmichael Amateur Supercross brought in 770 amateur racers on Sunday. The first-time event was a brainchild of MX Sports, the same group that runs the Amateur Nationals at Loretta Lynn's Ranch. AMSOIL was the official oil of the Daytona event.

Until then, we'll see you at the races.