Race Recap – Daytona Twins Cup 2026

It was a pretty exciting moment after getting to the track on Wednesday afternoon. The last time I saw those four blue Team Shocker Racing Aprilia RS660s was when we closed the door on the trailer the Sunday earlier. Aaron and Aaron made the long haul down with the equipment from Rockford, IL, and the rest met them there. Aaron Gustafson is really the only reason we were in a position to do any of this. He had been working like an absolute mad man over the winter to have four bikes completely ready to race as soon as they unloaded from the trailer 22 hours away.

This was the first time a lot of us would be attending a MotoAmerica race, not as fans, but as participants. And it would be the first time three of our four riders would be attempting a professional level race. I’d done a lot of studying of the rule book, technical guidelines, podcasts, and everything I could ingest to understand the circus better. But the only way you’re really going to understand the difference between a club race and a MotoAmerica event is to live it, and we were confident we had enough preparation to make it through to the other side.

There is very little track time before you need to set a qualifying time to determine if you are in the race or not. 25 minutes of practice—that’s all you get, so you better be close by the time you roll out of the trailer. Our goals were layered, but the primary goal was to put four bikes into the show. Coming from Illinois and Wisconsin, that practice round would be the first time any of them would sit on a road bike in 2026. We showed up to Florida with 12 members on our team—4 riders (Chuck Burton IV #444, Chris LaBuguen #410, Ethan Song #871, and Maxim Gulinsky #888) and 8 crew. I’d be working with our ace on the #444.

Before I close this section, it must be stated that while Aaron was the reason the bikes showed up ready to go off the trailer, Chris LaBuguen really moved mountains to make this entire effort come together. I simply do not have the mental capacity to juggle as many things as he did to make sure everything was where it needed to be from garage assignments, all communication with MotoAmerica, to crew personnel, to branded clothing and table clothes, to ensuring everyone as where they needed to be when they needed to be there.

We configured our initial setups based on Aaron Gustafson, Chris LaBuguen, and Shon Stanton’s setups from the 2025 ASRA Race of Champions weekend in 2025. How that would transfer over to the Dunlops and different rider preferences would unfold on the track. The boys took to the first practice session, and Ethan and Chuck got up to speed quickly. They certainly weren’t at race pace, but they were right on schedule. Chris was a touch off, but I’ve been racing with Chris for long enough to know that he simply uses practice sessions to calibrate his head, and his practice times have very little (for better or worse) correlation to the pace he’s going to run in race. This first practice session was Max’s first time ever being on the Daytona racing surface. For anyone that’s ever been to Daytona, you know that it’s one of the most physically imposing tracks to see, and it takes a bit of time to get comfortable with riding up and down that banking. Max had 25 minutes to work all of that out.

It’s interesting to be the crew chief for somebody that has well over 5x the racing experience as yourself and substantially more ability on two wheels. Luckily, Chuck and I had an understanding going into this weekend that I wasn’t going to try to coach him to lower lap times. We had other people in our camp qualified to do that. He would trust that I’d have everything ready to go for him, keep him informed, keep him from having to work on the bike or worry about bike issues himself, and he could focus on the race itself. I’d make sure I handled bike preparedness, and he would ride the thing as fast as he could. I needed to make sure I held up my end of the bargain.

Qualifying got underway, and both Chuck and Ethan got out to pretty good starts. Both of them were running together and running a much quicker pace than Ethan had been able to six months prior at ASRA on the same bike. At the conclusion of the session, Chuck and Ethan would be starting P19 and P23, respectively. You need to qualify within 110% of the polesetter’s time in order to be guaranteed in the race. A late-session heater by Chris Parrish dropped the top time by nearly a second from Bodie Paige’s time, and it put Chris on the #410 just over the 110% qualifying threshold. At this point, we had the #444 and #871 in the race with the #410 and #888 on the outside looking in.

It’s unclear to me why MotoAmerica chose to only run a single qualifying session for Twins (and Hooligans) for this event; however, our plan was to run Max and Chris in Friday’s Practice 2 session, come in under the 110% threshold of pole, and provision for a starting position if either bikes were able to make it. Max, now with two sessions on the track and a night to process the information, made a bunch of changes to the bike at the direction of Bruce Barry. We had 25 minutes to go perform. Max was clicking seconds off every lap as he got more comfortable and familiar with the track. He was just on the cusp of dropping below that 110% threshold, but ran out of time. At the conclusion of practice 2, we had two of our bikes solidified on the grid and two of our bikes that would not be running the two races.

My knowledge of the actual happenings on track of the race is limited to the view I was able to get from pit road, MotoAmerica timing app, and conversations with the riders afterward. The Twins Cup races are 9 laps at Daytona, and we were starting from the 7th and 8th rows with Chuck and Ethan. The lights went out for the start of race 1, and both of our riders got poor starts. Chuck struggled to get the Aprilia out of neutral and into first, and both bikes were near the back of the 31 rider grid. However, they started making hay early and working back up through the field. Chuck and Ethan hooked up and began passing riders together and working their way up, running in the 2:03-2:04s, before finishing P21 and P23. The light blue K*Clay-painted bikes sure are easy to spot out there. A good start, but we knew there was more in the tank.

Warmup the next day was exciting for a couple reasons. First, both Ethan and Chuck went out in the early morning warmup, on worn tires and a colder track, and went faster than their race pace. We knew that this was going to put us at a pace to catch up with the next cluster of riders if we could keep up with their draft through the first lap. Second, I got interviewed by Kenny Abbott during the warmup on the microphone that broadcast to everybody that was at Daytona over the PA system. I had no idea Kenny was even walking by when everyone else in the pit pointed at me, and the microphone showed up. It was such a cool experience, and I hope I conveyed the excitement I had for this Team Shocker Racing team appropriately! I also learned I need to stay real close to the microphone for it to be audible. My bad!

Anyway, we’ve got two riders that are feeling awesome after warmups, and we put on our last new set of Dunlops. And I placed the last set of tire stickers for the weekend on the #444. I got another cool experience when I went out to catch Chuck’s bike on pit road as he came in from the sighting lap. The magnitude of Daytona really sunk in at that moment for me, and it helped to appreciate just how cool this whole weekend was. As the starter light went out, the race began. We had better starts from both bikes, but not great. Unfortunately, there was an early red flag from riders further up in the field on lap 1. After the restart, the race would be shortened from 9 to 6 laps, so there wouldn’t be nearly as much time to settle in and find a rhythm. Lights went out, and Chuck and Ethan were off. The two were moving, and we didn’t have the same fall back on starts that we’d had in the previous two. Both Chuck and Ethan were running low to mid 2:03’s and dicing in and out of a large pack of 5-6 riders. Unfortunately, we had a mechanical issue with Ethan’s #871 machine that sidelined him to a DNF. Chuck kept riding his butt off though and despite taking a piece of rubber or debris to the neck headed towards the bus stop, he moved his way to the front of this clump of riders. When he came to the checkered, he got passed by .012 seconds by the #201 machine, and the #444 finished P18. A top 20!

This entire weekend and months leading up to the event was a learning experience for all of us. I have pages and pages worth of observations, notes, and action items to take before the next event. While we were far from perfect, we showed up with a plan and executed as well as we could. Can we make a mountain of improvements before the next one? Yes. Am I extremely proud of every rider, crew member, and partner that helped us complete the Daytona weekend? Absolutely.

The next stop on the MotoAmerica schedule for Team Shocker Racing is in Elkhart Lake, WI at Road America on May 29-31, 2026. And of course, we’ll be at all the ASRA Midwest events. Now that we’ve got our legs under us and we’re a lot closer to home, we’re ready to come back home and put in an even better performance. Watch out for the #444, #871, and #888 at America’s National Park of Speed! See you there.

-Matt Treske