ALL DAI AT DAYTONA

Jason Dai, Family, and Crew!

Dai and team competed in their first ever professional race at the Daytona 200 and far surpassed everyone’s expectations. Click the link for his ASRA results.

With all the preparations behind them, the team began Friday practice with one goal for the weekend, finish the race. After fixing a few small problems with the bike, some suspension adjustments, and three rounds of qualifying Jason laid down a personal best lap time to start 25th on the grid for the race. This was great, it put him in the first wave of riders, ahead of the second group.

Saturday morning warm up would see Jason pit after two laps because of losing a shift pivot bolt and fluid in the pan. Missing valuable track time wasn’t a good start to the day but the team worked quickly to get the bike prepared, did some last minute checks, and gridded the bike just in time for the start.

At 1pm the green flag waved and Jason started his first ever Daytona 200. He began conservatively knowing it’s an endurance race but things quickly changed. Just 9 laps into the race there were already two red flags, completely changing the race and pit strategy. Jason pit complaining about the front wheel so the team swapped it and sent him back out for the restart.

The rest of the race would continue under green and after 18 laps the pit board called Jason in for his first tire change, the crew had a phenomenal pit stop taking less than 29 seconds. This combined with setting more personal best laps would see him inside the top 20. The crew brought him in a little early for his last splash of fuel to avoid all the pitlane traffic but from this point on it was all Dai, battling his way to a 14th place!