Sturgess Cycle Triumph rider Kenny Riedmann scored two consecutive sixteenth place finishes in the AMA Pro GoPro Daytona Sportbike Championships held at the Homestead Miami track Sept 21-23.
While many would consider it success, the Belfountain, Ontario rider came away less than impressed with his personal performance and the Homestead track, not to mention the weather. “I found it hard to come up to speed there,” explained Riedmann. “I found the place to be a bit intimidating to be honest. There are a lot of concrete patches on the track that were really slippery in the rain and some walls that seemed pretty close.”
Riedmann spent the first practice session learning what was a new track for him, getting to know where the bumps were and where there was standing water. Qualifying, he simply described, was “Not much fun.” The Sturgess Cycle Triumph would be gridded in eighteenth for both GoPro finals.
In the first race on Saturday Riedmann had a lonely ride to a 16th place finish and admitted that he was still learning the track and struggling with the 675 triple. “I think we missed on the mapping,” he offered. “I had to short shift it and I wasn’t feeling all that confident. I looked more like practice.”
Sunday morning saw a brief upswing in Riedmann’s outlook as he rode the British triple to fifteenth fastest in the morning practice session and recorded his fastest lap of the weekend; under dry conditions. As race time neared and the field prepared to grid, the skies opened causing the first of several delays. “We had to turn back into the pits and get fitted with rain tires.” he said. ” And then as we were ready again a storm came through so there was a rain delay and just as we were good to go again there was a delay for lightning. We were an hour late getting on track.”
Riedmann elected to play it smart in the twenty-three lap final and ride safely and conservatively, a game plan that served him well. “It was really important to me to just finish,” he explained. “We weren’t planning to go home after this so it was kind of important that we keep the bike in one piece. I just glad to get out of here, I’m really looking forward to New Orleans, we tested at NOLA and I really like that track.”
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