Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Eli Tomac finally has a win with his new team, taking the Daytona Supercross by Honda on Saturday night after withstanding heavy pressure from Red Bull KTM’s Ryan Dungey the whole way. They both talked about it in the Daytona post-race press conference.
Racer X: Congratulations, Eli, take us through the race, starting with the start.
Eli Tomac: The start was super key, just the way that it fell in there through the chicane after the first turn. The day kind of started with qualifying, because that’s how important the start was. It was a good thing for us that we came out on the pole there. That led to a good heat race start and to a good main event start. Going into the race itself, it wasn’t the roughest Daytona track I’ve seen but you still had to pick your lines and jump over some bumps here and there and just stay clean the whole time. But for me and the team, this was huge. Obviously this year we’ve been a little bit down in the dumps. Hopefully this is a little bit of a change of wind for us and we’ll see what we can do the rest of the season.
Talk a little bit about winning here at Daytona. What does that mean? Certainly your fourth career victory, but again a win here at Daytona.
Tomac: This is a race that you kind of want to notch off. Other than getting a supercross win and then motocross, Daytona is so unique in itself that this is definitely a special one for me.
Let’s move to Ryan Dungey. Ryan, your ninth podium [this year] in supercross. You now have a 39-point championship lead in the AMA supercross standings. Take us through your race. Did you try to chase down Eli? You kept pressure on him all night long and you were right there until the end.
Ryan Dungey: Yeah, it was very good. We got off to a really good start. I had the inside line covered and then Eli kind of snuck around there by the second or third corner and made the pass. Obviously like he said, that start was really key so I tried to focus on it. Early in the day Eli was going good, obviously in the heat race too. I knew he was going to be strong so I tried to obviously get behind and then tow in with him. I let the race kind of settle in a little bit and then tried to just put the pressure on. The track wasn’t the roughest. There were some ruts that developed and they got deeper and choppier and you kind of had to switch your lines up, but when a guy is hitting his lines and hitting his marks and making no mistakes, it’s maybe possible to get up on the inside of him but it was very hard to make a pass or get underneath him. Overall it was a good race and if I have to get second, it was a good battle and it’s not too bad either. Keep building.
Eli, how important was it to win that heat race with such authority? It seemed like you just built momentum from that.
Tomac: Yeah, any time you can get out front early you try to just ride like you’re supposed to, I guess. For me I was able to get in a good flow early and just hit the lines I wanted to and just felt one with it. Other than that, I just tried to take it to the main event.
Ryan, did you think you had a chance to catch him at any point in the final?
Dungey: Yeah, I did. Obviously I made a few mistakes and he got away. It never was super close. I never was to the point where I probably could have made a pass, but it was right there. The track was tough to pass on tonight, and that’s no excuses. But from where we were at in the heat race, we made a few changes, and I was definitely happy with the performance more in the main event. Obviously Eli was a little bit faster than us in the heat. Then in the main event it was good to know we were right there on him. There was a few corners before the dragons back where he went wide and maybe if I was close enough… But like I said earlier, when he’s going that pace it’s very tough to get on the inside. So he had his bases covered tonight.
Did anybody watch the 250 main event? Can you learn anything from the 250 when you go into your final?
Dungey: It was a battle. Had me on my tippy toes on the starting gate. It’s fun to watch. I could see obviously [Jeremy] Martin was trying hard but they were bunched up one, two, three. The good thing about this track was there wasn’t a lot of time to be made, so it was really good, close racing. I think good for the fans. Just a good, hard-charging track.
Eli, what does this do for your confidence going into next week?
Tomac: It’s huge. I think it’s the lift of spirit that we needed. The past two weekends have been tough. Going from 11 podiums and three wins last year to only having one podium at this point in the season is pretty tough mentally. So it’s just a start to hopefully something that leads to better results.
Do you feel like the outdoorsiness of this track really helped you with that?
Tomac: I guess you could say so. Maybe it does come a little bit easier to me. But I feel like I’m definitely just as capable of a supercross rider also.
Ryan, walk us through what happened when you went off the track there?
Dungey: I forgot about that, actually. I just scrubbed a jump to the right and it kind of caught me and took me right. Luckily I was able to squeeze in between two hay bales. I didn’t really lose too much time but it’s never good when you come close to the hay bales like that. We saved it.
Eli, was there anything in particular that you changed this weekend? Or was this an event you were looking forward to kind of change course for the season?
Tomac: Honestly there was nothing drastic that changed, other than going home in Colorado. That was the only difference to the whole program all week. Just came in here to Daytona with an open mind.
