This past weekend’s Championship Cup Series (CCS) event at Daytona International Speedway was not your typical club race. Essentially, it was a last-minute test session for several AMA regulars looking to shake down new machines, blow off some cobwebs and acclimate themselves to the speed and demands of the high-banked Florida circuit. AMA regulars Fernando Amantini (Middleweight GP), J.D. Beach (Middleweight Superbike), Chris Clark (Unlimited Superbike), Danny Eslick (Heavyweight Superbike), Geoff May (Heavyweight Supersport), Eric Wood (SuperTwins) and Chris Ulrich (Unlimited GP) all took CCS race victories while dialing in their AMA racebikes. Three names that did not appear prominently in the CCS results listings, however, were Ben Bostrom, John Hopkins and Larry Pegram. Bostrom split his race laps between mentoring his 18-year-old teammate Clark and doing full-speed testing on his own Pat Clark Motorsports Yamaha YZF-R1 American Superbike. Bostrom retired from most of his races and slowed while leading another, handing that win to Clark. Foremost Insurance Pegram Racing Ducati’s Pegram started most of his CCS races well after the field started, pulled into the pits for adjustments and did not factor into the results. Hopkins chose another path to do his testing. He started his two races, Unlimited GP and Unlimited Superbike, by launching his Team M4 Monster Energy Suzuki GSX-R1000 American Superbike hard and grabbing the holeshot from the third row — both times. And each time Hopkins ran amazing out laps to build big leads — three to four seconds within the first 3.5 miles. In fact, during Hopkins’ second race he did a 1:49.3 from a standing start and finished with a best lap time of 1:47.1, unofficially the fastest time of the weekend by far. But at the end of each race Hopkins surrendered his huge leads by pulling into the pits rather than take dominant victories. “These guys [CCS racers], they work hard and drive a long way to come to these races,” said Hopkins. “I don’t want to take away their money and contingency. We did what we needed to do here.” Asked how the process of setting up his new GSX-R1000s was going, Hopkins said, “Really good, man. I mean I only did 12 laps because I came in, but we got down to 1:47.1, which is apparently not too bad for this track. We’re not racing on this layout [during the AMA event], but man, I feel great. It just feels good to be having fun on a bike. I haven’t felt this comfortable on a bike since back in ’07.”