AARON YATES, No. 20 Jordan Suzuki

“From the start I knew it was going to be really tough. Blake’s bike was really strong coming out of the first horseshoe driving through the infield, he started gapping me. I was thinking it was going to be a real long race. On the banking, I saw I didn’t have anything for him and I couldn’t even pull up into his draft. I was trying to come up with something. You can’t really come up with a strategy for a race. You’ve just see how the start goes and work from there. Fortunately, we got out there and kept going good. Everybody was racing clean. Around the seventh or eight lap, Geoff had gotten out in front and had a little distance on me. We had a real good run in the chicane, and managed to get by with some speed. I was thinking if I could get by before turn one, maybe I could get a good enough draft to where guys couldn’t draft me. I did what I had to do. I did the best I could in the infield and tried to get a pretty good gap, and that’s what I did.

 On winning at Daytona for Michael Jordan: “I think it’s pretty big. Daytona’s always big. I really worked hard to do the best I could to come down here and win one for him. I’ve got to say thanks to him for being interested in our sport. It’s definitely been a big plus. I’m sure it’s opened up awareness to a lot of people who never knew our sport even existed. Just being a rider for him has been an honor. It really feels good to be successful and get his name and his team out there.”

 BLAKE YOUNG, No. 79 Suzuki

“I can’t thank the EMGO Suzuki guys enough. They build awesome motorcycles. The bike just felt great. It wasn’t really a big deal for me to push it in there in turn one, it felt really good.”

 GEOFF MAY, No. 99 Jordan Suzuki

“We had a rough two days. From the get-go, we were struggling with all kinds of little gremlins and bad luck. My guys worked real hard. They’re all new, I’m new. They all worked real hard, and they put me on a bike I could go out there and put on the box. We missed the setup a little bit. We had to ride on the backup bike, because we had some problems with the Superbike, the A bike, this morning. We didn’t know what we were going to have going into the race. I knew Aaron was going to be good. I thought him and I would be battling it out. The goal was to follow him or to have him follow me and we’d sort it out the last couple of laps. For me, our race didn’t go that way. We missed the setup.

“It’s such a short schedule coming in here. Daytona is a serious race track. You can’t really show up and have it not right, you can’t have any problems. If you fall behind, the EMGO guys and all the other guys have been here all week and have 600 miles around here. For Aaron and I to come here and put it up on the box after a couple of sessions, there’s something to say for that.”