The MotoAmerica championship finished its second race weekend of the month at Brainerd International Raceway after a competitive outing at Road America just 2 weeks ago. Here’s how the field panned out.
Superbikes
Bobby Fong came out swinging at Brainerd securing both race wins for Wrench Motorcycles. Fong left the weekend on top of the standing in the Steel Commander Superbike Class. After a heated exchange on track with Josh Herrin who finished in second in both races Fong was able to pull away and build a gape that Herrin wouldn’t be able to recover from in Race 2. Fong said “It sounds good, but we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves,” Fong said when told he was leading the championship. “We’re only four rounds into this thing. We’ve got a lot of races left. Honestly, first thing is I want to wish my dad Happy Father’s Day. He doesn’t go to many rounds, but I want to wish him Happy Father’s Day. We’re on a good streak right now. We’re going to just play it safe and just maximize points each weekend.
I would have never thought I would even be in this position last year or even leading up to the season. The goal is just to get on some podiums and see what we can do. But now we’re in this thing, and we’ve just got to be smart. We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves. Going into this race, we made some changes this morning and I told my data guy, ‘Nick, we need to smooth this bike out.’ On the warmup lap out there, I’m like, ‘I think we smoothed it out too much.’ We took a lot of torque away. At first when I had some grip, I’m like, ‘this thing is slow,’ but once the tire started going away it played in my favor for sure. You just kind of roll it around like a 600. It was slippery out there. So, what we did with the electronics definitely helped out there. Kudos to the team. Congrats to these guys. They’re keeping me honest. I always go good here, and the Ridge is a different story. We’re just going to keep going and try to keep this lead.”
Scholtz Continues Dominance in Supersport
Scholtz continued his stroke of dominance in the Supersport class with Strack Racing. Scholtz won both Supersport races at Brainerd, solidifying his place atop the class standings. He said, “Yesterday we felt great…Made a couple changes for the practice this morning. We went backwards, and then we went to yesterday’s settings for this race. It was just strange that I was only kind of stuck in the high 33s whereas yesterday I could do 33.3, 33.4 and didn’t feel like I was riding at the absolute limit. Today, if I tried to push more, I was running wide, missing the corners, tucking the front. So, I just have to go back and look at the data and figure out what I was doing differently.
Definitely the first couple laps I thought that I would be gapping them, and PJ (Jacobsen) kept me honest. He definitely picked it up. I know that he’s coming. It’s good to see Corey (Alexander) up here, one of the two taller guys. So, that’s cool. Overall, happy to be taking the double. The team have been working really, really well, and just thank you to all the guys that have been supporting me. HJC, 4SR leathers, Alpinestars, the Strack Racing Company, everyone that makes this possible for me. Thank you.”
Uribe Gets First MotoAmerica Wins After Gillim Crash
Orange Cat’s Jason Uribe capitalized on an early race error by Hayden Gillim which resulted in Gillim crashing out of the race on lap 3. Uribe seized the opportunity to secure his first win in his MotoAmerica career. Uribe had to fight past a charging Ashton Yates who took the lead after Gillim’s crash. Howevere, Uribe was determined and stayed poised on the task ahead. Uribe made the move on the final lap where he was able to overtake Yates and take off for the win.
Landers Leads Repeat Podiums in Twins Cup
Rocco Landers Secured a double win in the Twins cup this weekend. The podium was the same for race 1 and race 2 with Landers taking P1 followed by Alessandro Di Mario and Rossi Moor in P2 and P3 respectively. Landers said, “I kind of got it a little bit deep and if I had snatched the brakes I would have gone down. I assumed he might see me and kind of get out of the way at that point, but the kid is a fighter. Made me work for that one way harder than any race this season so far. But it’s cool to race these guys. They’re always super-fast. Rossi and I kind of got to get our elbows out there a little bit, especially Rossi, though he’s a little bit down on power. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find some things for COTA. Got to give a huge shout out to my uncle Ken. He’s in the hospital right now. He was watching the race. My thoughts go out to him currently. But it was a good race for me. I had a lot of fun.”
Gillim Finds Redemption After Stock 1000 Crash
After winning race 1 in stock 100 and king of the baggers Hyden Gillim thought his Sunday was geting off to a great start. However, that soon was thwarted by an early crash in stock 1000 race 2 that saw him DNF. However, Gillim had one more opportunity to race and in King of the Baggers race 2 he came back and won both races in addition to the King of the Baggers Challenge this weekend. He said, “I was a little nervous after crashing in the Stock race earlier,” Gillim said. “I didn’t want to repeat that. But, no, I was pushing as much as I felt comfortable. I knew if I could get into the corners pretty good and get out of them pretty good, it would be hard to pass. Everybody stepped it up from yesterday. If you could look at this morning, I was third and I wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t go any faster, but everybody else did. It’s an awesome weekend after Road America. Road America was a rough one.”