2018 Daytona TT American Flat Track Results

Larry Lawrence | March 15, 2018

2018 Daytona TT American Flat Track Results – Indian factory rider Jared Mees picked up where he left off last year. The defending series champ ran a flawless race on his No. 1 Indian FTR750 to win the opening round of the 2018 American Flat Track Championship Thursday night at Daytona International Speedway.

2018 Daytona TT American Flat Track Results

Mees battled past Indian teammate Brad Baker seven laps into the 25-lap final to take over the lead. Once up front Mees pushed to nearly a two-second gap ahead of second place. About halfway through MotoAmerica road racer JD Beach worked his way into second on his Team95 Yamaha FZ-07. Beach closed the gap on Mees and got to within about 7-10ths of the second, but Mees was able to respond to the challenge and held Beach at bay in the closing laps.

The margin of victory was 0.462 seconds.

TT specialist Henry Wiles made a strong charge through the field on his Willy Built Kawasaki Ninja 650-based machine and finished third, 4.2 seconds behind the winner.

That put three different brands on the podium, showing the competitiveness of the race.

Briar Bauman raced his Zanotti Racing Kawasaki to fourth and Brad Baker, who led the first six laps of the race, rounded out the top five.

“In the beginning I had to get physical with Brad [Baker] a couple of times,” said Mees, who also won this race last year. “I had to get by and over the jump I just had a real good line and was able to get aggressive. The last ten days there’s been a lot of time and effort testing and getting prepared. A big shout out to my entire team. We put another win out there for Indian Motorcycle.”

2018 Daytona TT American Flat Track Results

Beach was happy to land on the podium.

“I missed this race last year, so it was awesome just to be out here,” Beach said. “The last couple of laps I was making up a little bit of time on Jared and I was like ‘C’mon, c’mon!’, but he’s riding so well right now. We’ll go to round two and try and get a win.”

Wiles seemed a bit frustrated with his result, in spite of the strong charge he made from sixth in the early going.

“I just had to pass too many people,” Wiles explained. “I think I had to pass Bryan Smith first and by the time I did the leaders had already gapped away. I passed a few more, but when I final came through and got around the last corner and saw the lead they had on me I knew I was going to have to start pulling some rabbits or I’m not going to be able to get back in this race.”

And what of the factory Harley-Davidson squad? Off-season development work on the Harley-Davidson XG750R, had the Milwaukee faithful hoping the team would close the gap on rival Indian. The results at Daytona were mixed. This year all three factory Harley-Davidson riders made the Grand National (versus two last year), but the top Harley finisher was Sammy Halbert, who took 11^th. Halbert was 28.6 seconds behind the winner. Last year Jake Johnson took fourth on a factory Harley, just 10 seconds behind Mees. Brandon Robinson was 12^th and Jarod Vanderkooi dropped out with a few laps remaining and was credited with 16^th on the other factory Harleys.

This year’s Daytona TT track was an enlarged version of the inaugural national last year. The wider corners and bigger jump made the track considerably faster and made for better racing with plenty of passing opportunities. Even though the track was larger, because of the increased speed, lap times were generally two-to-three seconds faster than last year’s race.

2018 Daytona TT American Flat Track Results

The 15-lap AFT Singles main event was won by Dan Bromley of Warrington, Pennsylvania on a KTM 450 SX-F, with Bromley avoiding two early incidents that took several riders out of the race. Earlier, Singles heats were won by Ferran Cardus (Honda CRF450R), Kolby Carlile (Yamaha YZ450F) and Jake Lewis (Suzuki RMZ 450). Lewis followed up with a semifinal victory; the second Singles semi was won by Cardus.

“All the preparation we put in is really showing,” Bromley said, “[but] I knew I had to ride a perfect race.”

The series next moves to the Atlanta Short Track National at Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, GA, on April 7 for round two.

For additional series info go to www.americanflattrack.com