Eli Tomac welcomes Webb to the 450s

There was a frank exchange in the post-race press conference at Daytona between second-placed Eli Tomac and third-placed Cooper Webb.

Earlier in the day Tomac stuck a super-aggressive pass on Webb after diving up the inside of him in a right-hand turn in their heat race. The end result was that both riders went down but when questioned about it the Monster Energy Kawasaki rider remained resolutely unapologetic.

“We’re both going to have different opinions, I’ll tell you that,” said Tomac. “Here’s my opinion. There was a little bit of cross-jumping going on coming across that rhythm lane, I got pissed off and went for the take-out plain and simple.”

Webb for his part seemed to take it on the chin.

“I definitely was racing hard and I did come over a few times,” he said. “I knew he was mad and I heard him come in. It was a bummer that we both went down – that’s never good. Yeah, he told me ‘welcome to the 450 class’!”