Tuesday Conversation: Jake Zemke
March 14, 2006
By CJ
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There’s no winner’s list like that of the Daytona 200, and Jake Zemke added his name to it last Saturday. Given the embarrassing pace-car incident, it was a crazy race, but JZ—whose race was actually adversely affected by the incident—kept his cool and did what was necessary to pull off his first-ever Daytona 200 victory. We spoke with him by cell phone earlier today.

RRX: First of all, a big congratulations for winning the Daytona 200.
Zemke: Thank you, thank you.

Jake Zemke got his first-ever Daytona 200 win over the weekend. Andrew Northcott photo

That has to be your biggest win ever, right?
Yeah, for sure. Obviously the first time I won a Superbike race was probably pretty big, but the Daytona 200, the race itself is just huge. It’s got such a long history. It’s probably one of the biggest single events in motorcycle racing. It’s a pretty good feeling.

I can imagine. What have you done to celebrate the win?
Nothing actually. The team went out for dinner Saturday night, and that was about it. I had an early flight Sunday morning, came home and it’s back to business as usual. [Laughs]

How big a deal is it for a rider to win the Daytona 200 these days?
I don’t even know how to describe it. The event has been running for so long and there’s such a long history of it, dating the whole way back to when they used to race on the beach. They had one strip of road that they raced down then they cut off into the sand and then as the tide came up on the beach the racetrack got skinnier and skinnier. Those were way back in the day. Once the speedway was built, the race came inside the speedway. At that time there wasn’t anything like Daytona at all. It was something totally unique to itself—which it still is. Running on those high banks, there’s no other track we go to that anywhere comes close to being the same. It’s unique. As a kid I remember watching those races. The first time I probably ever watched was in ’86 when Eddie Lawson won. He was racing GPs and came over and rode. I remember watching Scott Russell’s win—watching him crash, pick it up, win the race. I remember watching all of those races as a kid. If you really look down the list of the winners of the Daytona 200, it’s a racing history all in its own.

It really does have a lot of history. People might have their complaints about the race, but you can’t argue with the history.
Yeah, well, at the end of the day the 200 is the 200 and it’s gone through changes in the past. But right now if you looked back at the history books you wouldn’t know when they changed from what [class] to what. All it does is list the winners. As a racer—as far as the class structure and stuff like that—you don’t have control over what class they’re going to have the 200 in. Back when Kenny Roberts rode it, it was basically anything goes. They were racing what used to be called Formula One bikes, and at some point it changed from the Formula One bikes to the Superbikes. Now it’s changed from the Superbikes to the Formula Xtreme bikes. That’s just the way it is.

Formula Xtreme is probably going to be better this year than it was last year.
Yeah, definitely. Obviously with the more participation of manufacturers, it makes the race a whole lot better for the fans. It makes it better as a rider, too. You want to compete against everybody; you don’t want to just compete against your teammate for a race win. The good thing I can hang my hat on, too, is that the very first one I rode, I did get to ride it on a Superbike and finished second that year. It still feels good; I don’t think it really changes anything about it. It’s just one of those events that, you know—we’re not even racing that class the rest of the year. We’re just riding that event, that’s how important that one race is. For Honda, it’s really important.

Zemke won by staying calm and riding smart. Andrew Northcott photo

Many riders are concerned with the safety at Daytona. What are your thoughts on it?
Obviously at some point the Daytona race itself outgrew the beach and they went into the stadium. There’s always been evolution in the race, and right now, when they changed from the Superbikes to the 600s, they changed the infield, and all that other stuff—like I said, it’s a new evolution. Safety is at the forefront of our sport right now. Motorcycling in general, if you look at the past month or two in supercross, you look at road racing over the last year or couple of years, safety is really the biggest issue you have to get with as a rider. That is the number-one most important thing. That being said, Daytona’s tried to make steps to help that along, but the fact is that we’re still running pretty much at 200 miles per hour with concrete walls right there. It’s not an enjoyable feeling. But on the other hand, there’s such a huge history of the race that it would be a shame to see the race go away. Maybe we’ve outgrown the speedway. Maybe we need to look into—I know there’s a lot of land around on the outskirts of Daytona—maybe it’s time a traditional road course was built and Daytona moves on to a new evolution again. It’s not really my call. Basically, as long as the Daytona 200 is around, I’m still racing it. That’s just the nature of the beast. When you have a job to do, you’ve got to go out and do it. It doesn’t matter if you like the track or you don’t. There are other tracks on the schedule that I think may be just as dangerous, or more so. We’re not going to stop racing just because the track is in question. It would be nice if we could get all of the riders together and make a stand for safety, but luckily we do have some tracks that continue to try to improve themselves and the racing conditions for us. Mid-Ohio’s obviously going through some changes this year; Road America is going through some changes with the Bill Mitchell Bridge. The last few years, Infineon Raceway, they’ve done a good job of trying to address the riders’ issues and they’ve made tons of changes up there. And obviously Daytona did as well. I mean, they made a whole new infield section for us.

With all the track building going on, when you talk of a whole new Daytona road circuit, it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it did a few years back.
I would hope so. I hope that would be something the people at Daytona are actually looking at and not just stuck on the past and what has been in the past—“It was good enough then, it’s good enough now.” Every year the bikes get faster, the tires get better; it’s just going to continue. The bikes aren’t going to slow down any time soon. Right now you’ve got 600s that are faster than the superbikes were probably five or six years ago. Just as we’ll see in the GPs when they go to the 800s. I don’t think things are really going to come down much. Within a year or two, they’ll probably be going faster on the 800s than they are on the 1000s.

Getting back to this year’s race, after qualifying, did you really think you had a real shot at getting the win?
I did. I thought our times were good on race tires. In qualifying, I didn’t really get that much out of the qualifying tires. It was funny because during the week, I had been sick leading up to the event, I had a bit of a head cold. I was really stuffed up and having problems breathing. I just didn’t feel that on. But luckily, with an extra rest day in the middle there, come race day I felt pretty good. I had a pretty disappointing Superbike race right beforehand, and I was upset at that. It was definitely a good turnaround because I felt I had really let my guys down in that Superbike race.

What was the problem in the Superbike race?
I went out in morning practice and I tried on a new set of leathers and they were a little tight on my arms and my arms pumped up pretty bad. We had two practices back-to-back: Superbike and Formula Xtreme. We didn’t have much of a break. [After practice], we had to go straight out for the Superbike race. I just don’t think I ever had time to recover from that. [Laughs] It’s funny because I haven’t actually gotten arm pump on a road race bike since maybe like ’99 or something. I really didn’t have much of an excuse. All I know is that by about the fourth lap my arms were already pumped up and by the time I got up to third place, I was pretty much done. I didn’t have anything left. Rog [Hayden] actually sent me a text message that said, “Sorry for messing you up in the race.” [Laughs] I called him back and said, “Hey, you didn’t mess me up at all, I was going the wrong direction at that point anyways.”

That was about you going off the track when he crashed?
Yeah, he crashed and then I had to stand her up and run off the track, to keep from [hitting] him. That’s just part of racing. I felt really bad because the guys gave me a great bike. When I went from eighth place to third in a matter of a couple of laps, my bike was working so good. I could see guys struggling with grip, and I had great grip. My bike, I was just being real patient with it and going forward. I just felt really bad for the guys because they worked so hard this whole off-season to give us something that would be competitive this year. I think it is and I don’t think we got to show what our bike was really capable of.

So you think this race was not really indicative of Honda’s superbike potential this year?
Yeah, I think our superbike effort is going to be really good. We’re right there. Well, part of that question was about the Formula Xtreme bike, too, and the guys—the [research and development] team who are supposed to be focusing on superbikes—obviously [at Daytona] they couldn’t focus solely on that. Now they will. They spent most of the winter developing the Formula Xtreme engine to where we thought it needed to be to be able to win the race. Obviously, we were underdogs coming into the race. It kind of seemed that way to us; everyone was putting all of their emphasis on Yamaha and their new bike. It was really good for Honda to go out and win the pole and get first and second in the race. It was definitely a good feeling for those guys who worked all winter long.

The pace-car incident shrunk what had been a strong lead for Zemke. Andrew Northcott photo

Are you at all tempted do the rest of this Formula Xtreme series?
No, I’m not. It was partially my decision. When we went into contract negotiations, I actually asked Honda not to ride the Formula Xtreme bike because I wanted to focus solely on Superbike. It’s hard enough to chase down Mat [Mladin] as it is, but mix in trying to ride two classes at the same time and it makes it almost impossible. Just because when you go testing, you spend half of your time on the Formula Xtreme bike and half the time on the Superbike, so you’re losing out—every time you go somewhere, you’re losing half of your time. Not only that, but it takes the attention of the crew and everybody else to try and do two classes, whereas if you do one, everybody’s focused on one goal and they’ve got one thing in mind. At first it sounded like I was going to be riding Formula Xtreme all season, but when the decision finally came down, they allowed us to bow out of the class and let Erion take over the reins of the Formula Xtreme class. They look like they’re off to a very good start. They’re plenty capable over there of doing the job. They’ve got capable riders, capable mechanics, and a capable team. That allows us to focus solely on Superbike, which is something we definitely need to do. If you look at the class right now, we’ve got nine factory Superbike riders and six of the nine are focused on Superbike solely. That kind of tells you what you need to do in order to win that championship. Mat’s tough, and it’s going to be a long year. We’re really happy to have a competitive bike again and things are looking good.

What did you think when that pace car came out? It had to be confusing.
Yeah, definitely. The pace car thing, there was definitely a mistake made there. I’m just glad it didn’t affect my run toward the front there because at the point it came out I had like a 16- or 17-second lead. There was quite a bit of confusion. I rode around for a lap-and-a-half and I kept looking for the pace car, trying to see where it was. I kept coming around where the pace car was supposed to be sitting, to pick me up, and I was looking, and I didn’t see it. So I slowly increased my pace and the last rider I passed was Tony Meiring, and him and then the guys behind him were all just stacked up behind me. So we slowly worked our way forward, and then we got, I think it was about three-quarters of the way through the pack and I looked over. I could see the pace car. There’s a memo on pace car procedure, and it wasn’t followed. Basically, there’s supposed to be two people in the car with the passenger waving riders by until they pick up the leader—if for some reason the pace car didn’t come out in front of the leader. Well, that never happened. So there was a lot of confusion there. I just held my position. [Laughs] I was very tempted to ride past everybody and go straight to the front, but I also knew that it said in there that basically as soon as the pace car flag comes out, there’s no passing on the racetrack whatsoever, you’ve got to stay in position. I didn’t want to jeopardize anything by that. I figured, well, I’m leading the race, as long as I don’t do something I’m not supposed to, I’ll still be leading the race. Obviously, the guys got stacked up behind me a little bit, and that 16-second lead went down to four seconds in a hurry.

Zemke had to fight off Josh Hayes (4) near the end. Andrew Northcott photo

And once the pace car was off the track, you had your hands full with Josh Hayes once again.
Yeah. The pace car pulled off and I didn’t even know it pulled off. [Laughs] I didn’t have to worry about not passing any riders before the cones because I didn’t even know the race had restarted! When it started, I’m going past the start/finish line, and I see the starter pointing at me, and I can see them talking on the radio and pointing at me, and I’m looking at them. They obviously knew I was the leader. I have no idea why things didn’t get worked out the way they were supposed to. There was a lot of confusion there. At first I started taking it real easy through traffic as soon as the race went back green, and I was like, “Man, I can’t take it easy.” But it was so hard because the lapped traffic throughout the race was actually good. Guys were paying attention and trying to be respectful. For the most part it all worked out pretty good. Last year was kind of the same way. A lot of those guys know they’re not running the pace it takes to win the race, so they’re aware of the blue flags. Only on a couple of occasions did a blue flag come out where you were behind a couple of guys and the first guy pulls over and the second guy tries to pass. But after the restart, those guys are all bunched up and they’re racing for position, or they don’t know if they’re racing for position. They don’t know if the guy ahead of them is a lap ahead or not, so everybody was basically racing everybody. It was really kind of tough to be careful, yet at the same time get through that traffic as quick as possible. The gap was staying at four seconds, and then I came around one lap and my pit board said +25. I had to double-take at the thing. I was like, “Wow, Josh must’ve pitted to get some fuel or something.” I really cracked back the throttle then. I was like, “Well, I’m just going to cruise this thing on in.” Then I came around the next lap and my board, I don’t remember if it said +1.5 or if it just said +.5—either way I said, “I’m in trouble.” At that point I really had to put my head down. We ran the fastest lap of the race coming into the white flag there. That was good enough to not let Josh get up there and race me on the last lap.