Membership
Riders Preferred Membership
Shop by Vehicle
Track Order
Contact Us
Last year, Road America marked the turning point in MotoAmerica Superbike racing. This year, on day one, at least, it reinforced the status quo.
Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing's Toni Elias, the points leader in the EBC Brakes Superbike class, pushed his way past his teammate Josh Herrin on the last lap and then held off defending champion Cameron Beaubier to win Saturday's race by 0.253 seconds at the Dunlop Championship at Road America, a track where Superbike winning margins are seemingly always measured in fractions.
After Friday practice sessions in the 80s and sunshine, Saturday brought scattered thunderstorms and temperatures in the high 50s. For the Superbikes, Superpole took place with no rain but on a thoroughly wet track. The afternoon, however was dry. Mostly.
With the temperature at 59 degrees, light rain loomed to the west of the track as the Superbikes lined up on the grid and started falling on the warmup lap. The start was delayed, the rain dissipated and the race was reduced to 12 laps.
Elias and Herrin led the early laps but by the halfway point, seven riders were within two seconds of Herrin in the lead. One by one they drifted off the pace until it was just the four factory bikes of Yoshimura Suzuki and Monster Energy/Yamalube/Yamaha Factory Racing alone at the front, separated by just 0.628 seconds as they started the last lap.
On that final lap, Elias forced his way past Herrin into turn five. Herrin ran wide and fell to fourth while Elias held off Beaubier and Garrett Gerloff to the line. All three of the podium finishers turned their fastest lap of the race on the final lap.
"It was kind of an odd race," said Beaubier. "One lap we'd be down in the 2:13s, 2:14s, and the next we'd be 2:17 or 2:18. It was just going off of feel. I think both of us saw Herrin get loose once going into turn two and I was like, 'Whoa, I don't want to do that.'
"We pretty much saw mist all the way through mid-race and then the last few laps it wasn't really an issue," said Beaubier.
On the cool-down lap, Elias and Herrin exchanged some complicated hand signals, but it ended with Herrin shaking hands with Elias as they circulated the track. So considering the history between the two, was the teammate honeymoon over at Yoshimura Suzuki?
"He was super mad at me," Elias said after the race. "But we were playing the same game. I didn't want to make him do a wide line or lose some positions. I am sorry about that. I cannot accept the way he comes to me and starts yelling. We didn't even touch. Nobody went down."
After the race, Herrin downplayed the incident, pointing out that he ultimately congratulated Elias on the cool-down lap.
"I just crossed the line and was super frustrated at first," Herrin said. "I just waved my hand at him but then two turns later I was fine. Our emotions run high right after the race when our adrenaline is going. I patted him on the shoulder and shook his hand, said good job.
| EBC Brakes Superbike | |
|---|---|
| Toni Elias | 151 |
| Cameron Beaubier | 122 |
| Garrett Gerloff | 88 |
| J.D. Beach | 87 |
| Josh Herrin | 71 |
"It wasn't dirty. I just wasn't expecting the pass where it was," Herrin added. "It's racing. The main thing I was upset about was that I lost second place to those guys and finished off the podium because of what happened. I just want to finish one-two, the same thing he wants, and it was impossible after the pass. We're teammates and I want to keep the good relationship going."
The victory, Elias' third in seven races, gives him a 29-point lead over Beaubier. It was Gerloff's fourth podium of the season as he looks for his first win in the Superbike class.
Despite their one-two finish, both Elias and Beaubier said they didn't feel very comfortable in the in-between conditions — neither wet nor totally dry — of Saturday's race. Sunday's forecast calls for another cool day, but with lots of sunshine, which should create excellent racing conditions. Both riders predicted a faster pace for Sunday's race.
Supersport
Supersport racing is known for tight competition, and Saturday's race at Road America lived up to that reputation with half a dozen lead changes in the first two laps and a fight to the finish.
Rickdiculous Racing's Hayden Gillim on his Yamaha YZF-R6 held off M4 ECSTAR Suzuki teammates Bobby Fong and Sean Dylan Kelly in a three-way battle, winning by 0.646 seconds. It was really closer than that, as Gillim eeked out a small margin mainly because the two Suzuki teammates were jousting with each other on the last lap.
| Supersport | |
|---|---|
| Hayden Gillim | 81 |
| Richie Escalante | 71 |
| Bobby Fong | 65 |
| P.J. Jacobsen | 63 |
| Sean Dylan Kelly | 58 |
Celtic HSBK Racing's P.J. Jacobsen, the points leader coming into the race, crashed on lap five, coming over the crest into turn six at Road America where the front tire unweights and the slightest error causes a crash. Along with the win, that put Gillim in the points lead, with a 10-point advantage over Richie Escalante, while Jacobsen fell to fourth place.
"It was a really fun race," said Gillim. "I was just happy I was able to stay in there. Last year I got beat up on a little bit here at this track so to be able to do this today was amazing and it shows what the Rickdiculous team has done with the bike over the off-season."
Liqui Moly Junior Cup
Rocco Landers won for the fourth time in five races and Dallas Daniels notched his fourth second-place finish, but Daniels pushed Landers harder than ever. The two Kawasaki Ninja 400 riders pulled a big gap on a frantic pack of five riders battling for third behind them. Daniels led most of the race and led out of the final turn, but Landers, despite running out onto the curbing, was able to draft past Daniels on the long uphill straight to the finish line to win by 0.095 seconds.
"I was actually trying to get by him about every corner," Landers said of his approach to the last lap, admitting he didn't have a specific strategy. "I didn't know what I was doing."
"Me and my team talked about strategy before the race," said Daniels. "You've got to be somewhere. You just don't know where. The whole race we were just kind of experimenting and trying to pull away so we didn't have anybody else in the mix."
| Liqui Moly Junior Cup | |
|---|---|
| Rocco Landers | 105 |
| Dallas Daniels | 93 |
| Jackson Blackmon | 53 |
| Gauge Rees | 49 |
| Kevin Olmedo | 45 |
| Dominic Doyle | 45 |
Daniels, a former flat-track racer, last year became the first amateur racer to win both the Nicky Hayden AMA Road Race Horizon Award and the Nicky Hayden AMA Flat Track Horizon Award in the same year. "We're not winning," Daniels said of yet another second place behind Landers, " but on the flip side, last year I was ninth, 10th, 20th, so I mean this is very huge, working with the Quarterley on Track Development Team during the off-season and becoming a better road racer. I've only been doing this for a few years."
Behind Landers and Daniels, five riders furiously contested the last spot on the podium, at one point charging four wide into turn five. At the line, it was Kevin Olmedo by 0.006 seconds ahead of Damian Jigalov. Nine of the top 10 riders were on Kawasakis as the Ninja 400 has increasingly become the popular choice in the class.
Stock 1000
Geoff May won a AMA professional race for the first time in 11 years as he edged Stefano Mesa by 0.015 seconds in the Stock 1000 race at Road America Saturday.
May, a veteran racer who was part of the ill-fated Erik Buell Racing effort in the Superbike World Championship, in addition to racing in various AMA series and the Daytona 200, has been club racing in recent years, winning contingency money from Kawasaki and BMW while working as a mortgage banker for Ameris Bank. Now, his employer is also one of his sponsors as he has returned to racing, reviving a career he thought was over.
"I'm trying to bring an outside industry sponsor into what I love," May said. "I want to see this sport grow. I'm going to race as long as I can. It might be this year. It might be 10 more years. I don't know. We'll see what happens."
| Stock 1000 | |
|---|---|
| Michael Gilbert | 56 |
| Stefano Mesa | 56 |
| Andrew Lee | 54 |
| Travis Wyman | 42 |
| Geoff May | 25 |
Franklin Armory/Graves Kawasaki's Andrew Lee finished third, despite still nursing a badly injured finger that has kept him from riding a motorcycle or training as much as he'd like. He edged out Travis Wyman of Weir Everywhere Racing by a fraction of a second. Despite finishing fifth, Team Norris Racing's Michael Gilbert narrowly held on to the points lead.
Road America is one of the weekends that feature two Stock 1000 races this season instead of the usual one race, so the riders will have another shot on Sunday.
Image Gallery
