Photography by Larry Lawrence
Jake Gagne’s time of 2:18.647 from yesterday’s Daytona Sportbike qualifying session held today and he will start from the pole for this weekend’s DSB races. The front row remains the same with Garrett Gerloff and Dane Westby rounding out the front row.
The biggest story of Sunday morning’s session was a heavy crash suffered by Gerloff in the high-speed carousel. He appeared to be pushing hard to get the pole. Gerloff was down for a long time and when he finally got up he appeared to be hurting.
Gagne talked about the incident.
“I hit some bumps and tucked the front end,” said Gagne, who won this race last year. “I was off the bike, but the bike kind of turned and the tires caught and it kicked up and hit me in the chest pretty hard. I couldn’t breathe for 30 seconds. I thought I broke some ribs or something.”
Gerloff said his bike looked extensively damaged. With the single-bike rule it will be interesting to see what the Yamaha Extended Service/Monster Energy crew does to get his machine ready to race.
For pole setter Gagne today was really about dialing in his RoadRace Factory/Red Bull Yamaha R6.
“We didn’t end up going faster than yesterday, but we were just working out some issues this morning and work on race setup,” Gagne said. “We kind of struggled a little bit this morning with the direction we went, so I think we’ll probably just go back. We’re definitely in good shape for the race.”
Corey Alexander returned from surgery on a broken collarbone just a few weeks ago to win the pole in the Supersport class.
Combined Daytona SportBike Qualifying from Road America – May 31, 2014
1. Jake Gagne (Yam) 2:18.647
2. Garrett Gerloff (Yam) 2:18.886
3. Dane Westby (Yam) 2:19.641
4. Jason DiSalvo (Tri) 2:20.077
5. Danny Eslick (Tri) 2:20.318
6. Bobby Fong (Tri) 2:20.511
7. JD Beach (Yam) 2:20.532
8. Jake Lewis (Yam) 2:20.859
9. Jake Zemke (Hon) 2:21.736
10. Kyle Wyman (Yam) 2:22.364
