Written by:
Kevin Krefting
10/20/2006
Daytona Beach, Fla.
The San Jose BMW team made history at Daytona International Speedway Saturday, winning a dramatic Inaugural 8 Hours At Daytona. The race was the first event in the SunTrust MOTO-ST Series.
Brian Parriott of Calistoga, Calif., Belgian Stephane Mertens and Nate Kern of Cherry Hill, N.J. held on to take a 14.856-second victory on their No. 46 BMW R1200 over the No. 18 M4 EMGO Suzuki SV1000S of Michael Barnes of Boca Raton, Fla., Geoff May of Gainesville, Ga. and Chris Ulrich of Lake Elsinore, Calif. In addition to claiming the overall win the BMW team took the Buell Motorcycle Company SuperSport Twins (SST) class.
The winning team completed 228 laps of the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course.
"Everything went smoothly," Parriott said. "The settings were perfect, tire wear was phenomenal. The times of our three riders were all within a second of each other, and I think that won the race for us."
The No. 32 Vallely Racing Suzuki SV1000S ridden by Chuck Ivey, Josh Day of Orlando and Frank Trombino of Kleinburg, Ont. completed the podium overall and in the SST class, five laps behind the winners.
The San Jose BMW ran near the front from the start of the race and found itself in a commanding lead after the No. 83 BMW Cycles Daytona BMW R1200 of John Haner from Austin, Texas, Sydney, Australia's Warwick Nowland and Mike Ciccoto of Sebastien, Fla. ran out of fuel on track with just over three hours remaining in the race.
The M4 EMGO Suzuki entry fought its way back from outside the top 10 after suffering a gearshift problem on the team's second scheduled pit stop just over an hour into the race. But the team was back up into second place with an hour and a half remaining and put on a furious charge to catch the leading BMW.
The Suzuki, with May aboard, made its final pit stop for a splash of fuel with 22 minutes to go and trailing by just under 30 seconds. May then lapped over two seconds quicker than the leading BMW as the laps wound down, but was unable to erase the deficit.
"We knew the Suzuki had to refuel one more time, so we weren't too worried," said Mertens of the closing laps. "The crew was really fantastic. They made no mistakes."
The No. 83 BMW Cycles Daytona entry recovered to finish fourth overall and in SST and fifth place went to the No. 7 Team Zyvax Suzuki SV1000S ridden by JB Layman and Scott Layman of Ellijay, Ga. and Steve Green of Knoxville, Tenn.
