| March 26, 2024
After a quiet start to the season at Daytona, defending champ Jared Mees bounces back with Senoia Short Track victory
By Chris Martin | Photography by Tim Lester
There was an eerie sense of deja vu when the Progressive American Flat Track tour descended on Senoia Raceway a couple of weeks after its Daytona double opener. Just as in 2023, Dallas Daniels stood atop the points following a triumphant opening weekend. And just as in 2023, reigning Grand National Champion Jared Mees was in desperate need of a big result after failing to reach the podium (ending a historic 14-race podium streak in the process).
A year ago, Mees responded with a clutch victory following a back-and-forth tilt with Daniels, a race that retroactively encapsulated the epic Mission SuperTwins title fight to come.
The script for the 2024 reboot implied a similar outcome, but Daniels was determined to break that pattern. And pretty much all throughout Sunday (the event was delayed a day due to inclement weather), the Estenson Racing star seemed to have the goods to make it happen.
He steadily improved his bike each time he was on track; Daniels clocked the fastest time in the second and final qualifying session, won his heat with relative ease, and then simply handled Mees in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, dispatching and dropping his rival in rapid succession.
Mees, meanwhile, was left searching. Despite throwing down a very quick lap in the first qualifying session, he couldn’t get his works Indian to handle to his liking, resulting in repeated mistakes and inconsistent lap times. Hoping for the best, he and his team gambled by chasing a setup direction they’d never previously explored as they lined up for the main.
But even that didn’t go as planned. Royal Enfield’s Johnny Lewis, who had the third pick on the grid, looked set to choose the outside position on row one but reconsidered. He instead headed for the inside slot, arriving there at the same time as Mees, who came with the fourth pick. After some discussion with race officials, Mees was forced to relinquish the spot and move instead to the outside.
Fueled by a potent concoction of indignation and adrenaline, Mees transformed what the riders on the front row had deemed the least desirable starting spot into the prime position in practice, powering into the lead as the field slammed into turn one.
That lead was short-lived, however, as Daniels soon swooped underneath with an effortless pass. It would have come as no surprise if the young championship aspirant left the field in his wake from that point on, but instead, Mees discovered that his risky and novel setup happened to be exactly what he had been looking for. The champ regrouped, mounted a counterattack to reclaim the position, and then set about executing his own escape.
His getaway came in small increments but added up to well over a second by the time the two reached the checkered flag, as Mees and Daniels continued their 2023 revival act with another Mees/Daniels 1-2 finish at Senoia Raceway.
“What a day,” Mees said. “We fast-qualified, but I wasn’t really feeling like the fast qualifier, to be honest. I was making lots of mistakes and didn’t feel like I had things under control. The heat race went okay, but I couldn’t get around [Brandon] Robinson. And in the [Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge], Dallas ate my lunch. I was really worried about him; he and his team were rolling good. He was very consistent and could get the bike turned, and that’s where I was struggling all day.
“For the main, we tried some things we never did before, and it panned out. Everything came right to me.”
“The track was really one line, pretty much all day,” Daniels said. “The guys were searching around a little bit, it seemed like for us, we were glued to the bottom. Jared said he thought I was going to eat his lunch, and damn, I was thinking that, too. We were rolling good all day. We were trying things and dialing the bike in all day in a way we wouldn’t have last year, and it felt pretty good. We kind of went for it and thought we had it good for that main, but Jared was just a little bit better.”
The biggest revision from the ’23 script has come via the return to form of Mission Roof Systems’ Brandon Robinson, who took a small step back in ’23.
Robinson carried over his excellent 3-1 opener by securing another podium, but not until after working hard to find a way past Johnny Lewis for third and then fending off Rick Ware Racing’s two-time Grand National Champion Briar Bauman to hold the position to the checkered flag.
Lewis on the Moto Anatomy X Powered Royal Enfield was ultimately pushed down to sixth, losing out on a potential top-five result to Fairway Ford/ JMC Motorsports’ Jared Vanderkooi, who spent his main event snaking his way up from the bottom of the top 10.
Memphis Shades/Corbin’s Brandon Price finished in seventh, one position ahead of Rackley Racing’s Davis Fisher, while a pair of promising rookies—Mission Foods/Zanotti Racing’s Trevor Brunner and Latus Motors Racing/Vance & Hines’ Max Whale—completed the top 10.
AFT SINGLES
Speaking of deja vu, the collective fears of the Parts Unlimited Singles field are taking shape for a third consecutive season.
Despite the unquestioned speed and skill of the likes of Estenson Racing’s Tom Drane, JPG Motorsports’ Chase Saathoff, D&D Certified’s Dalton Gauthier, and American Honda/Mission Foods’ Trent Lowe, among others, two-time champion Kody Kopp is, once again, assembling an imposing early-season title lead.
Kopp ultimately coasted to the crown courtesy of big points leads in ’22 and ’23. If his opponents don’t get things together in a hurry, ’24 could prove to be more of the same.
Despite not being overly pleased with a surface that had local weather conditions working against it for days, the Rick Ware Racing pilot demonstrated his caliber yet again. Kopp not only made the best of the situation, but he also penned one of his personal favorite main events to date, in which he ran a previously untested high line and utilized it to storm around the outside of Saathoff, Drane and Gauthier and ultimately run away at the front. Kopp’s win looked easy, but apparently, it was harder than it looked.
“Man, that was crazy,” Kopp said. “What a hard race for me. We made a couple changes after finishing fourth in the (Al Lamb’s Dallas Honda Challenge) and put our head down early in the main event. I put my trust in my team and my guys did a heck of a job. We made a big gamble going into that main event and she worked so good. I went around the outside of everybody—every pass was on the outside—so that was a cool one. It’ll go down as one of my favorites.”
Drane minimized the damage with a second place, while Saathoff was happy to pick up a podium at a venue that hadn’t been especially kind to him.
FRA Trust Advisors’ Aidan RoosEvans also slipped past early race leader Gauthier to earn a career-best fourth-place result.
Kopp’s advantage over Gauthier is already 17 points, while title hopefuls Drane and Saathoff are in danger of falling a full race back. They are now trailing by 20 and 21 points, respectively.
The 2024 American Flat Track season continues on April 27 for the Texas Half-Mile in Fort Worth, Texas.
CN
AFT SuperTwins (Top 10)
- Jared Mees (Ind) 36 laps
- Dallas Daniels (Yam) 1.591
- Brandon Robinson (Ind) 3.211
- Briar Bauman (KTM) 3.371
- Jarod VanDerkooi (Ind) 7.706
- Johnny Lewis (RE) 9.482
- Brandon Price (Yam) 10.689
- Davis Fisher (Ind) 11.984
- Trevor Brunner (KTM) 17.031
- Max Whale (H-D) 17.191
AFT Singles (Top 10)
- Kody Kopp (KTM) 22 laps
- Tom Drane (Yam) 1.522
- Chase Saathoff (Hon) 2.726
- Aidan RoosEvans (Yam) 3.662
- Dalton Gauthier (KTM) 4.539
- James Ott (Hus) 7.306
- Hunter Bauer (Yam) 8.271
- Trent Lowe (Hon) 8.898
- Travis Petton (KTM) 8.971
- Bradon Pfanders (KTM) 10.193