Reigning Grand National Champion Jared Mees accomplished exactly what he needed to at the DuQuoin Mile, the first of three critical Miles that may play a key role in determining this year’s title fight.

 

By Chris Martin | Photography by Tim Lester

That mission was to remind the world why the factory Indian pilot is considered one of the greatest to ever circulate a big track at speed while extracting maximum points in the proving.

Mees did just that, shaking free of a concerted effort to prevent him from running clean laps and then managing just enough of a gap to dissuade any desperate late strikes, even if a wall of smoke left by Dalton Gauthier’s expired Royal Enfield drew his trio of pursuers a bit closer than he would have preferred with two laps remaining.

He ultimately held strong to win by nearly four-tenths of a second, earning his 75th career Grand National Championship victory in the process. It also further underlined his modern-day Mile mastery, representing his 28th such victory to move within one of Chris Carr for second in the discipline’s all-time order. Remarkably, 25 of those 28 have come since he joined Indian in 2017, an era in which he’s racked up a stunning 64 percent (and climbing) victory rate on the Miles.

The only downside of Mees’s dominant evening was that his primary title rival, Estenson Racing Yamaha’s Dallas Daniels, also accomplished exactly what he needed at the DuQuoin Mile.

While Daniels would have loved to have beaten Mees straight-up at one of the rounds where his hopes for an unprecedented 10th Grand National Championship appear to hinge, merely containing the ground gained by the champ to four points when down by 19 with just six races remaining was a significant big-picture win for the challenger.

It could have easily been a seven- or nine-point swing, with Daniels harried throughout by Memphis Shades/Sody Ent Yamaha’s Brandon Price and Rick Ware Racing KTM’s Briar Bauman.

Even though it could have been argued that Daniels should have accepted Mees’ victory as inevitable and worried more about the riders behind him as opposed to the one in front of him, that number-one-plated carrot proved to be just enough of a lure to keep the Estenson pilot 0.055 of a second ahead of Price and 0.297 of a second ahead of Bauman at the checkered flag.

By contrast, the main did not play out as well for the other major GNC title contender, Mission Roof Systems’ Brandon Robinson, who came into DuQuoin ranked second in the points and with a strong track record at the Miles.

Robinson got away in 10th but worked his way into the second group, fighting for fifth. He took control of that position when the riders took the halfway flags but faded to an eventual eighth. As a result, he’s now third in the points and 30 back of Daniels, an imposing deficit to erase considering the lack of rounds remaining, Daniels’ perfect podium record, and the selection of the tracks to come.

Price said, “It feels better than a normal podium. I had to work for it today. I’ve been sick all week. I was in the hospital earlier this week. And to come out here and get a podium at the ‘Magic Mile,’ it’s so awesome. Halfway through that main event, I was feeling it, but I kept my head down and tried to stay behind Dallas and Briar to let them tow us around and maybe catch Jared. We just couldn’t do it.”

Fifth was instead taken by Rackley Racing’s Davis Fisher, who used his superior Mile experience to outfox a pair of up-and-coming rookies in GOMR’s Davis Fisher and Zanotti Racing’s Trevor Brunner, edging them by 0.090 of a second and 0.132 of a second, respectively. Behind Robinson, RVR/Schaeffer’s Motorsports’ Cameron Smith and Fairway Ford’s Jarod Vanderkooi rounded out the top 10.

Mees still has his work cut out for him if he hopes to make (more) history, particularly with Daniels’ consistent excellence to contend with on top of everything else, but this DuQuoin showing was exactly what he needed after working his way back to form following a training accident a few weeks ago.

Mees said, “It was a great race. It felt good to feel good again. We knew coming in that the Mile was going to be a big player for us. We had a good motorcycle tonight. I played my cards right; I knew, with the speed I had in the corners, that if I started putting some good corners together, I could probably get a gap. It feels good, and we’ll move onto the next one.”

AFT SINGLES

The Parts Unlimited AFT Singles main event at DuQuoin was a multi-rider, position-swapping barnburner with a pair of competing-yet-entangled lead narratives.

We’ll start with a massive championship that vanished and then reappeared unharmed over the course of a half hour or so. Two-time defending champ Kody Kopp was living out his worst nightmare on the warmup lap, as his chain had somehow come off his bike while on the back straight. At the same time, second-ranked Tom Drane, winner of three of the last five Miles, took his spot on the front row, now with realistic designs of reducing Kopp’s advantage from more than 30 to less than 10.

Kopp’s Rick Ware Racing crew frantically struggled to get Kopp’s KTM back in working order as the field stormed by to complete their opening lap. But just as he got rolling a lap down, the champ was saved by a red flag that was flown because an exhaust header had come loose and fallen onto the racing line.

A complete restart put Kopp back onto the lead lap, even though he was forced to start from the back of the field. No matter; he leapfrogged his way up to the lead before the race hit halfway and was a contender for victory from that point on.

The pack he battled with slimmed down from 12 to nine and finally five when Turner Racing Honda’s Trent Lowe encountered mechanical issues seconds after taking the two-to-go flags in the lead.

Kopp took Drane’s line away as they negotiated turns three and four for the final time and attempted to chase down JPG Motorsports’ Chase Saathoff in the sprint to the checkered flag.

That spoiled the Aussie’s hopes, relegating him to a close fourth aboard his Estenson Racing Yamaha, just fractionally ahead of impressive rookie Evan Kelleher on the Schaeffer’s Motorsports’ KTM, who earned his first career top five.

Kopp came up one-thousandths of a second short of overhauling Saathoff at the line, the turnabout Saathoff had long been seeking after coming up on the losing end of these sorts of finishes far too many times in the past.

Kopp said, “Man, that was heartbreak on the sight lap. I shifted up to fourth, and she revved to the moon. You’ve got to be kidding me; I looked down and there was no chain. I ran it as far as I could. My team was scrambling to get me back in there. To come in second by that close—I would have been happy with a fifth there, but the last lap really played in my favor—hats off to Chase, he deserved to win that one. That was as fun as it gets.”

Saathoff’s victory by inches came following consecutive defeats of 0.036, 0.089, 0.011, 0.092 and 0.043 of a second in the most recent five Miles. Additionally, it provided the vindication of having earned the checkered flag after having his first—and previously only—career victory awarded when this year’s Texas Half-Mile was red-flagged and called complete.

Third went to 1st Impressions Husqvarna’s James Ott, who earned his first podium of the season as he continues to round into midseason form.

Bullet successfully dodged, Kopp (225 points) continues to lead by 32 points, only now over Saathoff (193) as opposed to Drane (188).

2024 American Flat Track Round 10 Results

SuperTwins

1. Jared Mees (Ind) 26 Laps
2. Dallas Daniels (Yam) 0.389
3. Brandon Price (Yam) 0.444
4. Briar Bauman (KTM) 0.686
5. Davis Fisher (Ind) 5.907
6. Declan Bender (Ind) 5.997
7. Trevor Brunner (Ind) 6.039
8. Brandon Robinson (Ind) 7.290
9. Cameron Smith (KTM) 8.172
10. Jarod Vanderkooi (Ind) 13.660

Singles

1. Chase Saathoff (Hon) 19 Laps
2. Kody Kopp (KTM) 0.001
3. James Ott (Hus) 0.044
4. Tom Drane (Yam) 0.008
5. Evan Kelleher (KTM) 0.204
6. Tarren Santero (Hon) 5.704
7. Travis Petton (KTM) 5.719
8. Evan Renshaw (Hon) 5.799
9. Jared Lowe (Hon) 9.390
10. Tyler Raggio (KTM) 9.455