Road Atlanta SportBike
Team M4 Monster Energy Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas was in spectacular form again on Sunday, orchestrating a virtual repeat of Saturday’s triumph to complete the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike doubleheader sweep with another win today at Road Atlanta.
Despite Saturday’s success, Cardenas and his crew put their heads together and improved his GSX-R600 for Sunday, bettering his machine over the front section of the course while retaining its capabilities on the back straight and into the hard-braking Turn 10 chicane.
If anything, Sunday’s race was even more thrilling, with close to ten riders challenging at the front and positions being swapped multiple times per lap. Despite the constant shuffling, the Colombian managed to stay in a position of strength throughout. Cardenas led early, settled into the fight during the middle stages of the race, and then once again made an epic escape over the final two laps.
He took full advantage when his rivals slowed up one another disputing second. The Colombian broke free at the tail end of the race to claim his third win of the 2010 season with a 1.683-second margin of victory at the checkered flag.
After scoring his tenth career AMA Pro motorcycle road racing win…
Martin Cardenas says: "Today we made a change on the bike to make it more agile and I was feeling much, much stronger. At the beginning of the race until the middle I tried to push as hard as I could and thought maybe I could break away. But when I saw that it wasn’t possible and all the guys were still on my tail, I decided to slow the pace a little and try to see what was going on.
"The battle with a few of the guys was really good and two laps from the end I made a move. I was a little bit lucky because the guys behind me had a little bit of an issue with each other and I was able to get a gap. I maintained it for the last two laps and won again. It was a great race."
Cardenas’ double victory sees him jump into third in the championship standings with 103 points.
