Danny Eslick (Ruthless Racing/Trev Deeley Motorcycles) won his second AMA Pro Racing Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson series championship Sunday at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, New Jersey, while Kyle Wyman (KWR/Millennium Technologies) grabbed the victory in the final race of the 2014 season.
Eslick, who earned his first Harley-Davidson series championship in the class’s 2010 debut season, entered the final round with a 16-point lead over Benny Carlson (Suburban Motors H-D/Suburban Speed), the only other competitor with a mathematical chance to take the title. But a shoulder injury sustained during Sunday morning qualifying put Eslick’s championship hopes in doubt. Still nursing the injury during the race’s opening ceremonies, Eslick chose to forego the sighting lap, but when Carlson was hit with a 10-second jump start penalty, the final championship outcome became all but a formality, allowing him to ride a conservative race to a sixth place finish.
“I ran off the track and wadded it up in the wet grass this morning and pretty much destroyed that motorcycle,” Eslick said. “The Trev Deeley/Ruthless Racing team busted their butts from the time I crashed the motorcycle until the moments before the race. We were pretty close to not making it. Hats off to everybody out there.”
Meanwhile, Wyman battled at the front amidst a five-rider pack that included Carlson, Steve Rapp (Suburban Motors H-D/Aerostar Global), Tyler O’Hara (Josh Chisum Racing/Bartels’ H-D), and polesitter Shane Narbonne (Six-Four Motorsports). On the last of the race’s twelve laps, Wyman was able to use lapped traffic to create the small gap he needed to break free from Rapp for the victory and take his second win of the season.
“I tried to put my head down from the beginning,” Wyman said. “I got the holeshot from the second row and did my best to push as hard as I could for a whole lap. But [Rapp] came flying by on the front straightaway, and from that point I knew the race was going to be a little different than I wanted it to be. It turned into a pack and I sat there through the middle part of the race. It was getting crazy up front and I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get caught up in any of that.”
