An ASRA Appeals Board convened Saturday night at Carolina Motorsports Park overturned Cory West’s disqualification from the 76th Daytona 200 held on March 18th, reinstating his second-place finish and restoring his $20,000 purse payout.
According to ASRA President Kevin Elliott, the Appeals Board consisted of Bart DeFrancisco, John Dodson and Arnold Hastings. “The Appeals Board decision is binding,” Elliott told Roadracing World, adding that the air filter rules for ASRA SportBike, which apply to the Daytona 200, will be clarified to require either OEM or exact replicas of OEM filters in the future. Elliott also said that ASRA would issue an official statement on the Appeals Board hearing, probably tomorrow.
In the meantime, the Trackside Suspension & Engineering team–which fielded West’s bike–issued the following statement:
On behalf of Cory West, Trackside Suspension & Engineering would like to announce that Cory’s 2nd place finish in the 76th running of the Daytona 200 has been reinstated. We would first like to say congratulations to Cory on his outstanding ride and performance, and to the team for their amazing team work throughout the weekend.
TSE would like to state that the original disqualification never should have happened in the first place. CCS published a 2017 Daytona 200 air filter clarification page prior to the event. Based on that article, the TSE team ran the filter that was deemed to be legal for the Yamaha R6. Nowhere in the clarification did it state that the legal BMC filter was
only for a specific model year bike. The clarification states “At this time we are only aware of one company (BMC) that makes/made an air filter with the stock inlet opening, BUT they also make one with an enlarged opening.” We ran the cone with the stock inlet opening.
After talking with BMC over the last few weeks they informed us that the “stock” inlet opening on their cones is for all 06-17 Yamaha R6’s. With that, what CCS was claiming as a stock cone was in fact not the stock opening for any model year R6. The BMC cone inlet is smaller than the stock 06-09 cone and larger than the 10-17 cone. Therefore any R6 running the Daytona 200 should have been deemed illegal, based on the rule book. Because of the 2017 Daytona 200 clarification page, we were under the understanding that the BMC filter and small cone was deemed legal for any model year R6.
It is our opinion that the CCS Rulebook on this subject is too vague. This is a serious topic for everyone in the racing community. Changes need to be made to insure each competitors’ confidence in the legality of their equipment.
“I’m very happy with the decision of the appeals board.” Mark Stiles, TSE team owner and crew chief said. “I’m also very proud of the team for sticking together and their support during the appeals process. We are looking forward to next year’s 2018 Daytona 200.”
“I’m beyond relieved to hear that we won our appeal and we got our result back from Daytona!” Cory West said. “It’s been a long 3 weeks of waiting, but we stuck together as a team and fought for what was right and in the end we finally get to celebrate our hard earned finish. I want to thank TSE and Pirelli for the opportunity to race in the 200 again. I look forward to going back next year and trying to finish one spot better!”
The TSE team would like to thank our sponsors for all their hard work and support. Without each one of these companies, our team wouldn’t be able to achieve this level of success. Trackside Suspension & Engineering, Pirelli, Penske Racing Shocks, MD Racing, Bliss Machine LTD., Shoei, Froggy Moto Tours, Pop Shadow Decals, SBS Brake Pads, H&E Services, Engine Ice, VP Racing Fuels, World Wide Bearings, Zero Gravity, and SKF.