Saturday:
Beaubier Gets His Eighth Win Of The Season
Championship Points Leader Wins In MotoAmerica Debut At The Ridge
SHELTON, WA (August 29, 2020) – In three of his four championship-winning seasons, Monster Energy Attack Performance Yamaha’s Cameron Beaubier won eight races. Today, in just the ninth race of the season, Beaubier won his eighth HONOS Superbike race, this one coming in the MotoAmerica debut event at the Ridge Motorsports Park. The four-time and defending MotoAmerica Superbike Champion led from start to finish to win the 46th Superbike race of his career.
The race was restarted after a multi-rider crash on the opening lap that brought out the red flag, but after that it was clear sailing for Beaubier as he rode to an 8.1-second victory over Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz. Beaubier’s race got a bit easier when his teammate Jake Gagne was forced to slow near the end of the race with a badly worn tire, the San Diegan slipping back to fourth at the conclusion of the shortened 13-lap race.
Beaubier also benefitted from the red flag restart after he botched the initial run through the chicane.
“The first time around going into the chicane I didn’t click it back into first gear, and so I came out of that right-hander after I ran it wide in the first corner where I flicked it back right. I was in second gear and I just bogged pretty bad off that corner and got passed by these guys. Then I had a big old slide on the back straightaway. That threw me out of the seat pretty good. Then, obviously, it got red flagged. We went back to square one and they shortened the race to 13 laps. I was like… I knew I needed to try to get off the start as good as I can and try to lead it out of the chicane and push as hard as I can. I was able to open up a little bit of a gap at the beginning. And it was slowly growing, slowly growing and then, all of a sudden, I was like, ‘man, I got to keep my head down.’ All of a sudden, I came by and it was a pretty good chunk. I was like, ‘I’m sure these guys are battling.’ There was no easy place to pass here. You pretty much got to kind of stuff the guy to get around him with all the tight corners here. So, I’m sure it made it good, some pretty exciting racing. I’m glad I was away from these guys. Just hats off to my Monster Attack Yamaha guys. I feel like I just need to pinch myself sometimes. It’s going really well. I just want to keep it going and not get too excited and just keep the momentum going.”
Scholtz came out the better of a near-race long scrap with M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Bobby Fong, the South African battling back after running off track midway through the race.
“Some of the corners are really fun,” Scholtz said of the Ridge. “There’s a couple corners that are a little bit hard and a little bit bumpy. For the most part, it’s a really fun track. From corner five until the entrance of corner 13, it’s really awesome. It’s fast and long, flowing corners. They all kind of link up well. It’s a really cool, fun track. I’m definitely loving it here.”
The pass on Fong came on the entrance to the tight and slow mini Corkscrew.
“I was going to try to pass him in every corner that I got up next to him,” Scholtz explained. “I passed him into corner 11, I think it was, and ran wide then. Then corner 12, I was able to dive up the inside of Bobby (Fong) there, but he went inside so I kind of went out wide and set up the apex going into corner 13. Like Bobby said, I didn’t have to actually pass him, just have to kind up get up next to him and kind of stop him tipping in which I managed to do. I got really close to actually running off but managed to save it and bring it home.”
Fong battled through the pain from his injured left wrist/hand to finish third after the South African passed him on the final lap.
“It’s almost like if you’re leading the thing, and somebody’s so close to you, all you have to do is get next to him and don’t move,” Fong explained of the spot where he was passed by Scholtz. “You can just go all the way wide and you’re going to get the position. That’s what makes this track really interesting. It’s really exciting for the fans. Good job to Mathew. It was a good race.”
As previously mentioned, Gagne was fourth, some six seconds ahead of M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Toni Elias, the Spaniard well clear of Scheibe Racing BMW’s Josh Herrin.
Italian Lorenzo Zanetti ended up seventh in his MotoAmerica debut, the Celtic HSBK Racing Ducati rider dropping down the order in the beginning of the race with an off-track excursion.
Rock and Sons Racing’s Jayson Uribe ended up eighth in his first MotoAmerica race of the year on his Honda CBR1000RR. Uribe bested Altus Racing’s Cameron Petersen by two seconds with FLY Racing ADR Motorsports’ Bradley Ward rounding out the to 10.
After nine of 20 races (10 rounds), Beaubier leads Gagne in the title chase by 49 points, 200-151. Scholtz is third with 136 points and Fong jumps to fourth with 102.
Superbike Race 1
Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha)
Mathew Scholtz (Yamaha)
Bobby Fong (Suzuki)
Jake Gagne (Yamaha)
Toni Elias (Suzuki)
Josh Herrin (BMW)
Lorenzo Zanetti (Ducati)
Jayson Uribe (Hon)
Cameron Petersen (Suzuki)
Bradley Ward (Kawasaki)
Sunday
Beaubier Takes His Ninth Win At The Ridge
Sixth Victory In A Row For Four-Time MotoAmerica Champion
SHELTON, WA (August 30, 2020) – To say that Cameron Beaubier is on a roll would be a gross understatement. The Monster Energy Attack Performance Yamaha won his ninth HONOS Superbike race of the season, his sixth in a row and the 47th of his career today at the Komatsu MotoAmerica Superbikes At The Ridge.
In easily winning today’s 17-lap final, Beaubier eclipsed his season best of eight wins with his ninth of the season while extending his lead in the 2020 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship to 54 points.
“Yeah, man. It was really good to be able to get nine wins in a season and be able to pass my record that was a few years ago,” Beaubier said. “That just feels really good for me. Everything’s going so good right now. Like I said yesterday, sometimes I feel like I need to get pinched. But at the same time, it’s weird to say but right now that I have the most experience in the Superbike class other than maybe Toni (Elias) or something like that. I’m just dialed in on my R1. I’ve been riding this thing for five or six years. I feel really, really good. Everyone’s working really, really hard at the Monster Attack Performance Yamaha team. It feels so good to put this up on the top of the podium multiple races throughout the year, and also having a great teammate in Jake (Gagne). Being able to go one-two today feels really good to just reward them for all their hard work. It’s just been fun so far this year. They’re slowly catching me. I’m just running for my life out there. Just hope to keep it going and really looking forward to going to New Jersey and seeing how this bike works around there. Hats off to everyone here at Ridge. They made the track a little safer with that chicane. They’re willing to change the track here and there to make it a little safer for when we come back in the future. I think it was a really fun track. So, hats off to them.”
Beaubier’s teammate Jake Gagne ended up second, a day after a front tire issue knocked him off the podium and into fourth place. Gagne’s 20 points stretches his advantage in the championship, and he sits in a solid second place, 22 points ahead of Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz, who finished fourth on Sunday.
“Good way to come out especially after the rough race we had yesterday,” Gagne said. “I’m happy we got off to a good start. I think Cam (Beaubier) was going to want to get a start. Like he said, if he could roll out of that chicane first, he was going to go. Luckily, I was second right behind him. I charged. I tried to keep him in sight, but he was just inching and inching and inching away in those first couple laps. I just didn’t quite have the pace for sure to run with Cam. But we made a lot of progress over the weekend. We got more and more comfortable. We learned a lot about the bike. I think we all had a good time racing here at the Ridge. It was fun to get to a new track and race with something a little bit different. Hats off to Cam. Hats off to Bobby (Fong). Bobby kept me honest that whole race long. I didn’t know who, if it was Bobby or Mat (Scholtz). I figured kind of the both of them. I was keeping an eye on my pit board and I think in the first couple laps I got a little bit of a gap and then we kind of stayed right there. He inched back in. So, he kept me honest. He didn’t make it easy on me. I’m happy to bring this Monster Energy Attack Performance Yamaha back home in second and we’ll roll on to Jersey.”
Bobby Fong matched his result from yesterday with another third-place finish, the M4 ECSTAR Suzuki rider again racing with pain in his left wrist/hand from his crash at PittRace a few weeks ago. Fong closed on Gagne in the closing stages of the race, coming up .528 of a second behind the Yamaha rider.
“Honestly it feels like a win,” Fong said. “It feels good to be on the podium again, especially after missing out the last few rounds. It was good. I think we’re going in the right direction. I think we found a baseline with our bike. Every race weekend we’ve gone to it’s like we’re throwing the kitchen sink at it, changing it up and down, and this weekend we kind of started from where we left the test when we were testing here over a month ago, and we just kind of kept chipping away at it and just baby steps, baby steps. I felt good because the main thing we’re taking from this weekend is the pace I had at the end of the race today, which was really good. I felt like for myself. We’re just going to keep that momentum going and try to catch this guy (Beaubier).”
Scholtz, meanwhile, was another 3.1 seconds behind Fong in fourth place.
Fifth place on track went to M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Toni Elias, but he was docked a position which in turn handed the spot to Scheibe Racing BMW’s Josh Herrin. Elias had passed Herrin on the final lap after a race-long battle between the two veterans.
Stock 1000 Championship points leader Cameron Petersen had a strong ride to seventh on his Altus Motorsports Suzuki GSX-R1000, the South African chasing down Lorenzo Zanetti for the entire race with the Italian crashing out on the final lap.
Rock and Sons Racing’s Jayson Uribe had his second straight top-10 finish in his first MotoAmerica event of the year, the Californian riding to eighth some two seconds clear of FLY Racing ADR Motorsports’ Bradley Ward. Travis Wyman Racing’s Travis Wyman salvaged a difficult weekend with a 10th-place finish on his BMW.
Superbike Race 2
Cameron Beaubier (Yamaha)
Jake Gagne (Yamaha)
Bobby Fong (Suzuki)
Mathew Scholtz (Yamaha)
Josh Herrin (BMW)
Toni Elias (Suzuki)
Cameron Petersen (Suzuki)
Jayson Uribe (Honda)
Bradley Ward (Kawasaki)
Travis Wyman (BMW)
