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Jake Zemke

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Beautiful weather, rolling green hills, and a world class facility; all punctuated by a crowd of thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts. Welcome to the Barber Vintage Festival at Barber Motorsports Park.

This year marks the 11th anniversary of the event and the crowd was as big as ever. Last year, over 65,000 people attended during the three day event and this year didn’t seem any different.

Of course, the highlight of this year’s event was the largest gathering of Britten V1000 motorcycles ever (which we’ll cover in-depth in a separate article), and as always, there was great vintage motorcycle racing by the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA).

Everywhere you looked, there were motorcycles. The amazing thing about this event is the variety. Unlike many events where the focus is on one type of motorcycle, Barber focuses on a little bit of everything.

Despite rain early in the weekend, the weather was clear and sunny for the running of the 2011 Daytona 200. The historically important race featured entries from the AMA Pro Racing Daytona Sportbike class, as it was decided a few years ago that the Superbikes were traveling at too dangerous of speeds through the turns and onto the banking of the Daytona International Speedway.

However these concerns seemed to be overshadowed by the issues 2011, as the race distance was ultimately not to be 200 miles, as today’s race saw a mid-race red flag for safety issues regarding the Dunlop front tires forcing a long delay, a second red flag with a multi-rider crash on the restart, and a third red flag caused by a crash at the checkered flag.

Perennial rider Jake Zemke won pole (1:49.775) for the race on his final lap of qualifying Friday, taking the first starting position from Jason DiSalvo, with Danny Eslick and rookie Daytona Sportbike rider JD Beach completing the front row. Of thouse four, only DiSalvo was quick in the Saturday morning warm-up, second fastest behind PJ Jacobsen. Josh Herrin, Dane Westby, and Cory West were the fastest five in the morning.

A reliable source in the AMA has just tipped us off to the fact that Ben Bostrom has signed with Pat Clark Motorsports (PCM) for the 2010 season. PCM, which has been linked to Bostrom since the beginning of the month, is keeping the deal under wraps though as they try to sign both Jake Zemeke and John “Hopper” Hopkins to the team as well. If successful, this would mean PCM is building the Deathstar of AMA Superbike teams for the 2010 AMA season.