If you’re a motorcycle racer and you’re not lining up on the grid at the Daytona 200, well, can you really call yourself a motorcycle racer?
Paring with Bridgestone Americas and running Battlax tires exclusively, Trevor and fellow rider Ben Young had lofty goals for a race with one of the stoutest starting grids in recent years. The 2024 running of the race would be Ben’s fourth Daytona 200 and Trevor’s first. Unfortunately, the team rolled into Daytona having completed very little testing. Rainy and cool weather at a Florida racetrack the week before the event did little to help the crew find ideal setups. Trevor’s goal was to break into the top 20, no mean feat considering the race has nearly 70 riders and that just to finish the Daytona 200 is an accomplishment in itself.
Midway through the race, Trevor clipped a curb, bent both wheels, and began to lose pressure in the front tire, which wasn’t noted until Trevor went hard into the wall after tucking the front end. Limping back to the pit box, the crew went to work with wheel changes and bodywork repair. Despite all the unanticipated excitement, Trevor finished in an excellent 20th position—his goal had been met. “Had I not crashed, a top 15 was in the cards,” said Trevor, who wanted to thank “everyone who pitched in to make the venture a success.”
Ben, with his additional Daytona experience, hoped for a top 10 finish. Switching from another brand of motorcycle—the brand on which he secured his third Canadian Championship this past summer—made this a particularly challenging race for both Ben and his championship winning crew, especially given the lack of pre-race testing opportunities. Ben blamed himself for his poor qualifying performance—at Daytona you need to find partners to draft with for optimum lap times—which meant he would start the race from 20th on the grid. Ben, whose steady, methodical approach to racing ideally suits endurance competition, finished the race in an excellent 9th position. “I feel I had a little more in me,” said Ben, “but given my gird position and testing limitations, I feel I did the absolute best with what I had.”
Trevor Daley’s OneSpeedInc fabrication shop constructed a pair of immaculate GSX-R750s to contest the most famous race of them all. Working day and night for months, Trevor engineered a number of time-saving solutions for one of the few races in the world—excepting the World Endurance Championship—with pit stops. And where there’s pit stops, there’s time to be gained and lost. Trevor’s pit stands and related equipment became the gold standard for the Daytona 200, indeed, the pit-stop-challenge at Daytona was won by MotoAmerica’s official Suzuki M4 racing team using OneSpeedInc equipment.
- From OneSpeedInc
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