Beata D Wronska: Daytona Supercross by Honda at Daytona International Speedway

Daytona Supercross

Chad Reed - All Photos by Pax Tolosi

Chad Reed Introduction

Chad Reed

It was our first outing to see the Supercross event. It turned to be a little road trip of myself, my husband Pax and our dear friend Wally who used to race dirt bikes a while back. It happened to be my birthday weekend so the timing was pretty perfect. We watch Supercross racing on TV often but seeing it life was just completely another experience. I can’t even describe how awesome it was to walk in to this huge stadium and just have the bikes roar fill out the air. I was speechless. We were able to walk in so close (as Wally stated it) that “dirt can almost hit your face”. We were right under one of the biggest jumps, it was the double with a flattop and nice long set of whoopees that led to another monster jump, this time a triple. Bikes and racing legends were flying all over in the air and jetting through the whoopees on the back wheel or pouncing around or just floating over them as Ryan Dungey did. All of it at incredible speeds.

We spent whole day at the venue and had a chance to get to pits and meet the riders. Quite an experience to see what is going on behind the scenes. We met KTM rider Andrew Short and said hi to Supercross and Mountain Bike Racer Justin Barcia. The amount of people that was crowding Ryan Dungey was just insane and it shows how hard those guys need to work on and off track.

I was happy to see in the 450 main event Andrew short to (who I had a chance to wish good luck before the race) lead for the first 6 laps. He was riding incredible and holding solid lead. But few key riders where becoming more and more impatient and were creeping in closer and closer. At some point it come down to few laps with Short and Dungey maneuvering corners next to each other and fighting for first. Tomac and Reed were getting closer but Reed got stuck in the rut on one of the berms and fell over what cost him few spots which he was not able to regain. It was exciting 20 laps to watch! The 250 final was also very exciting with Musquin taking from the start pretty dominating lead and coasted 15 laps later to the finish in 1^st.

We had plenty of time to enjoy all the elimination rounds, absorb the moment. Pax had a chance to take some incredible pictures throughout for us to remember. I’m glad our trio took this trip and enjoyed this day on the track together. The smell of the exhaust, the stunts in the air and the awesome and extremely loud noise those bikes make we will remember for a long time. Those guys are so talented that make the few hundred pounds heavy bikes rip through the air effortlessly making it look flawlessly easy and smooth. Another awesome day in the books!