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Despite a couple of mechanical issues throughout the first couple of sessions, Eslick scraped his way into Superpole and managed to qualify eleventh on the grid with a 1:26.219 behind the Superstock 1000 points leader, Bobby Fong. The rider out of Oklahoma maintained his starting position as the lights went out, putting his YZF-R1 in eleventh position on the opening lap. Eslick moved up one spot as the second lap began due to a mistake further up the field with his sights set on the M4 Ecstar Suzuki of Jake Lewis in front of him. The TOBC Racing Yamaha rider did his best to stick to the rear fender of Lewis, but his race pace was too much and Eslick decided to settle into his own rhythm. He was more concerned with the pressure behind him from the Superstock 1000 class rookie of Bryce Prince. It was a flashback to their titanic battle at round two in Road Atlanta as the Yamaha pair rode within one another’s wheel tracks. It wasn’t long until Hayden Gillim joined the battle and made it a three-way fight, but Eslick was able to stay in command of the group for the first couple laps of the scrap. Cameron Beaubier passed through on his way to the front of the field and that mixed things up, allowing Gillim to make his way past a couple of laps later. The two of them battled back and forth, but Eslick finally made the pass stick on the nineteenth lap as he was promoted to seventh place due to some crashes further up the field. Kyle Wyman made his way through after an earlier mistake and the trio continued to shuffle positions with Eslick eventually coming out on top ahead of Prince in eighth place, fourth in the Superstock
1000 class. In the second race, Eslick fell back a couple of positions off of the starting line and found himself in twelfth spot on the opening lap. He fought back and forth in a battle with David Anthony for the first half of the race, but the Oklahoma native was let off the hook after the Kawasaki rider ran off into the grass at turn one, leaving him in a fairly lonely eleventh position. On the thirteenth lap, Eslick came under pressure from Josh Herrin and he was forced to make way for the 2014 AMA Superbike Champion, but he didn’t let him get away. He was able to tag onto the tailpipe of Herrin’s R1 and match his pace for the remainder of the race, launching overtaking maneuvers of his own in the final laps. He ended up falling back a couple of seconds at the checkered flag and was forced to settle for twelfth place overall, fifth in the Superstock 1000 class.
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DANNY ESLICK : SUPERSTOCK 1000
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