Erion Hondas Disqualified At Road America
Henny Ray Abrams | June 5, 2009
The Erion Honda CBR600RR’s of Daytona SportBike Superpole winner Jake Zemke and third fastest Chris Peris were disqualified for a “fuel infraction,” according to a press release from AMA Pro Racing. The disqualifications handed M4 Suzuki’s Jason DiSalvo his fourth consecutive pole, with teammate Martin Cardenas now a season best second.”They say my fuel is illegal,” team owner Kevin Erion said in a telephone conversation on Friday evening. Erion explained that he’d bought his control Sunoco GTX 260 fuel from a distributor in Southern California, as he’d done all season. The fuel was purchased in a drum about a week earlier, before his race truck left Southern California. “It didn’t pass the AMA’s tests and I have no dispute that it didn’t, because it didn’t. I don’t test the fuel, I just buy it.”Erion pointed out that the smaller of the two openings on the fuel drum was marked “Texaco,” which he said he pointed out to AMA tech boss Al Ludington. Erion tried calling the company for clarification, but they were closed.”So we’re out of luck,” Erion said, before lamenting how the team had let down Peris and Zemke. “They disqualified all of Jake’s [Zemke] and Chris’s [Peris] lap times from today. Hopefully tomorrow it’ll be dry and, best case scenario, we can qualify ninth and tenth.”The pole would have been Zemke’s first of the season.Erion said that the entire episode “happened pretty quick, actually. The way Al [Ludington] put it to me is that he was getting phone calls from other competitors that our bikes shouldn’t be that fast. But they weren’t that fast. If you look at our trap speeds they weren’t.”Factory Aprilia Millennium Technologies’ Chaz Davies clocked the fastest top speed of 153.73 mph in Superpole. M4 Suzuki’s Jason DiSalvo was second at 153.38 mph and Zemke was third at 152.69. Peris was eighth fastest at 150.89 mph.
Superpole:
1. Jason DiSalvo (Suzuki) 2:20.153
2. Martin Cardenas (Suzuki) 2:20.908
3. Bobby Fong (Yamaha) 2:22.021
4. Chaz Davies (Aprilia) 2:22.122
5. Taylor Knapp (Buell) 2:22.164
6.. Chris Fillmore (Yamaha) 2:22.223
7. Josh Herrin (Yamaha) 2:23.893
8. Damian Cudlin (Yamaha) 2:24.180
Henny Ray Abrams | Contributing Editor
Abrams is the longest-serving contributor at Cycle News. Over the course of his 35-some years of writing and shooting photos, he’s covered events from MotoGP to the Motocross World Championship - and everything in between.
