The 2023 MotoAmerica Season has come to an end. The season finale at New Jersey Motorsport was a drama filled race weekend plagued with mixed weather conditions and championship titles at stake. Day 1 of the race weekend was clear skies and sunny but those conditions soon changed to a very wet and wind filled Day 2 and Day 3 that had dire consequences for some of the racers. Here are the results from the MotoAmerica Season Finale Day 2.
SuperBike
In a surprising yet also matter of time effort, Fresh N Lean Progressive Yamaha fill in rider JD Beach secured his first race win only weeks after joining the team. Beach is filling in for the injured Cam Petersen. In Superbike Race 2 there were mixed calls on tire selection with some opting to run slicks due to a drying track and most staying on rains given the lack of drainage on track at the time of the race. We would soon discover that slicks were the wrong call. Those on rains soon pulled ahead. By lap 6 JD Beach fought to the front and wouldn’t look back. The win marked his second Superbike win of his career.
After the race the elated Beach said, “I felt really good. I was just enjoying it. The bike was sliding around. I was spinning up. I just thought to myself, I wasn’t going to try to save the tire. I’d rather blow them off than have tires left at the end and not win. I just went for it. It feels really cool to get a win again after four years, and just getting on this bike for the last three rounds.”
Supersport
Race 2 in New Jersey was a special one for multiple reasons. The first was that MotoAmerica veteran Josh Hayes (Squid Hunter Racing) secured his record setting 88th win in the history of the series. Hayes tops the charts for the most wins in AMA history. In his post race interview Hayes hinted at wanting to come back next year. His plans for the future are unknown but every win from now on will continue to extend his record. Hayes commented on the wet track conditions in race 2, “I was pushing pretty good to just roll through a few areas with more confidence. Where it was bad, I was backing things down a lot, and I was still able to kind of maintain a pretty good gap and them not come back to me. So, I just kind of tried to stay steady and just thankful. It’s more relief than anything to get another race win in for the Squid Hunter team. Hopefully that’s motivating for the off-season for them to want to go racing some more.”
Twins Cup
In Twins Cup race 2 Blake Davis secured the championship after Gus Rodio lost control of his Aprilia and crashed out of the race. Davis said, “It was super crazy. The track conditions were really, really tricky. Just the red flags to add all the tension into it. I hope everyone is okay from all the red flags. This really isn’t how I wanted to win it, but I kind of knew either me or Gus was going to go down. We both had to beat the other one, so we were both going to push and either win or crash.”
Davis secured back to back championships this year after winning the class last year. Gus Rodio and Rocco Landers finished the year in 2nd and 3rd respectively.
Junior Cup
With the championship already decided this weekend was more of a formality than anything. However, the class was shaken up by the fact that Team ECB/Bartcon Racing Kawasaki’s Eli Block won both races. Block won both races after only appearing at 2 rounds this year. While the race winner didn’t have any bearing on the championship race. There was a brief mix up on who would be crowned with second and third place in the championship. However and earlier error was corrected and that correction saw Rossi Moor secure second in the championship. The feat comes after a season long struggle getting the team’s RC390 built up to power advantage most Junior Cup riders have with the Kawasakis. Max Van who had a poor outing in race 2 secured third in the championship.
King of the Baggers
Hayden Gillim (Vance & Hines/Mission/Harley-Davidson)clinched the King of the Baggers championship after winning race 1 and finishing second in race 2. The win makes Gillim a double champion in 2023 after he won the Steel Commander Stock 1000 championship at Circuit of the Americas a few weeks ago. Kyle Wyman won race 2 at New Jersey but that didn’t really matter. Gillim was racing with his teammate James Rispoli for the top spot and unfortunately an early mishap on track cost Rispoli of any fighting chance to catch the front pack. Regardless, Vance & Hines/Mission/Harley-Davidson secured a 1-2 finish in the championship making them the top dogs for 2023.
With the MotoAmerica season now over. Teams will head home for the final time this year and start preparations for 2024. We will keep you updated on offseason news as it becomes available.