Duhamel steals Daytona 200 pole from DiSalvo

DuHamel steals Daytona 200 pole from DeSalvo

(AMA Pro Racing Release) American Honda’s legendary Miguel DuHamel stole the Rolex awarded for the Daytona 200 pole away from Yamaha USA’s Jason DiSalvo by fractions of a second for the second year in a row today at Daytona International Speedway.

The Canadian became the first man to claim three straight Daytona 200 pole positions since ‘King’ Kenny Roberts pulled off the feat from ’80-’82.

DuHamel waited until the last possible moment to displace DiSalvo, bettering his previous mark after the checkered flag was shown to bring the session to a conclusion. His flying lap was a 1:41.095 compared with the Yamaha man’s 1:41.477, just a tick off last year’s pole time (1:40.928).

“We cut it pretty close,” DuHamel admitted afterwards. “I went out and there was 2 minutes and 22 seconds to be exact. The Dunlop qualifiers were really good and I knew I could put a hard lap on it, not babying it around, and then get another lap. There was no negotiating; I had to make it around before the checkered flag flew.

“I went out there and just got a good lap in. The new CBR600RR is awesome and we’ve been working really hard at Honda. We have a calendar over at Honda that tells us Daytona is coming up. We’ve been working pretty hard to get our bikes ready for this 200 race which is our biggest race of the year.”

When asked if he thought he had won the Rolex this year, DiSalvo said, “I didn’t want to make any assumptions. I knew Miguel was probably out on a lap and I was having flashbacks to last year.”

Reigning class champ Josh Hayes on the Erion Honda CBR600RR will open his race from the third slot on Row 1 (1:41.928), with DuHamel’s teammate Jake Zemke making it three Hondas up front (1:41.933).

Team M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Michael Barnes will head the second row with Celtic Racing’s AMA rookie Chaz Davies qualifying sixth, Ducati-mounted Larry Pegram seventh, and second Erion entry Aaron Gobert eighth.

DuHamel will open his attempt to score a record-breaking sixth Daytona 200 win on Saturday, starting at 2:00 pm local time.