Josh Herrin followed up on his Saturday victory at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, with another Superbike win on Sunday to complete a sweep of the weekend.
Herrin led wire-to-wire in Saturday’s race on his Ducati despite pressure from Bobby Fong and Cameron Beaubier, but Sunday had a different plotline. Under pressure from Beaubier, Herrin rode off course in the chicane after leading Lap 1 and handed the top spot to the current points leader, but Herrin recovered quickly and was back up front on Lap 4, where he remained until the checkers.
“The guys gave me a perfect bike this weekend,” Herrin said in a news release. “Like Bobby said, the track didn’t have the grip that it had yesterday, but it seems like when the grip is down, our bikes, the V2 and the V4, always seems to be better for us. I ran off in the chicane, and I just knew I had to put in a solid two laps to catch back up to Cam, or my race is over. I was able to do that 9.4, which I was shocked by. I don’t know what my best time was this weekend, but I don’t think it was anywhere close to that.”
The decisive moment of the race occurred on Lap 8, when Beaubier laid his bike down in the carousel and retired with the crash damage.
The accident effectively erased Beaubier’s points lead, which was 23 points ahead of Jake Gagne after two rounds. Third-place Herrin was in even more dire straits at 36 points behind entering Road America, but he left in second with only a two-point gap.
“Like we talked about yesterday, just getting through those first two rounds is important for us,” Herrin said. “I think for me mentally, I got to get through them. It’s like A1 for Supercross. I’ve just got to do it. Luckily, we had two really good races this weekend. We don’t want to catch Cam because of crashes, but that’s part of the game. Making mistakes is part of it. You’ve got to try to minimize them.”
For the second consecutive race, Herrin beat Fong to the line, this time by 8.6 seconds.
“I was kind of doing the same thing as yesterday,” Fong said. “We always try 100 percent, but I felt like the track was a little greasy today. Either that or I just couldn’t carry the momentum like I did yesterday. I was actually dumbfounded at the end of the race. I was going pretty slow with the times. ...
“I was a little more disappointed with myself that I couldn’t do the same pace. I lost the draft after the first lap and was just kind of a sitting duck. The crew has been working hard. It’s cool to get two second-place points. I was a little far down in the points leading up to this round. It’s good to move up in the points and to keep the Yamaha on the podium is good.”
Richie Escalante improved on his fourth-place finish on Saturday to take the final podium spot despite his Suzuki losing power on the final lap.
“For some reason, this year I haven’t had the best feeling with the bike, so I take time every day to feel a little bit better,” Escalante said. “I think today I was maybe a little bit lucky, to be honest, but it’s part of racing. I’m super happy to finish on the podium. In the last lap, I think I had no fuel. So almost did not finished the race. Super happy. I tried to stay close with Bob, but I made a mistake in the chicane. After that, I just maintained my pace.”
Fourth-place Benjamin Smith and JD Beach rounded out the top five. This was a career-best finish for Smith.
A pair of riders accustomed to riding up front saw their race hope evaporate early as Sean Dylan Kelly and Jake Gagne made contact early in the race. Both finished, but the incident relegated Gagne to eighth and Kelly to 14th, the last bike on the lead lap.
Gagne fell from second in the championship standings at the start of the race to fourth.
Bobby Fong’s back-to-back second-place results elevated him to third in points.
