Sure, it took Cameron Beaubier three days to get things right, but Sunday was the one that really mattered anyway.
On a sunny, blustery afternoon, the reigning MotoAmerica Superbike champion pulled off his first sweep at Road America in a pair of intensely competitive 190 mph bike battles on the rolling 4-mile course.
“After crashing yesterday and Friday, I was a little nervous going into today because I especially didn’t want to throw another bike down the road,” said Beaubier, a 23-year-old Californian.
“But you’ve got to ride on the edge if you’re going to beat these guys.”
Josh Hayes, Roger Hayden and Toni Elias were “these guys” on this day.
Hayes is Beaubier’s Yamaha teammate, a four-time champion and winner of eight of the past 14 races at the track. Hayden is a determined rider eager to demonstrate Suzuki’s progress, and Elias is an aggressive Spaniard with a MotoGP pedigree called upon as an injury replacement to be Hayden’s teammate.
And any of them could have won at least once.
But Beaubier benefited from Hayes’ error of aggression in the first race and then withstood a wild, four-man battle in the second to become the first rider in a decade not named Hayes to sweep Superbike rounds at Road America. The previous was Mat Mladin, a seven-time champion and the most dominant rider of his era.
“The race was crazy,” Beaubier said of the finale. “That was probably the most fun Superbike race I’ve ever had battling back and forth, because on Superbikes you don’t get that often.”
Elias, who had struggled with tire problems to finish a distant fourth in the first round Sunday, recovered to finish second, 0.684 of a second back in the second. The margin wasn’t reflective of the competitive nature.
Elias’ wild run into the downhill 90-degree left at Turn 5 on the final lap was worth the price of admission, as he braked deep from third place, got all the way past Beaubier for a split second and then barely held on at the exit.
“I tried to win,” Elias said. “The last lap, I knew my only opportunity was in Turn 5. After that, Cameron was faster. I tried, but it was impossible.”
Elias did manage to draft past Hayes on the uphill run to the finish line.
Hayes finished third in both races. In the first one, he gave up second to Hayden midway while battling Beaubier for the lead.
The teammates had swapped the spot three times in a half-mile before Hayes carried too much speed into a sharp right-hander and ran over the curb and onto the paved runoff area.
“I got a pretty bad run out of the chicane and Cam came by me, but I was close and thought, ‘Ah, he’s a sissy on the brakes. I’ll just get him into Canada Corner,'” Hayes deadpanned. “I might have missed that a little bit.”
Although Hayes made several more mistakes, he settled in after about a lap and reeled the leaders. By the time the white flag flew, though, he had used up his tires.
Yamaha’s Josh Herrin swept the Superstock 1000 races held concurrently with Superbike. In the first, Herrin grabbed the lead for the final time in Turn 5 on the last lap when Claudio Corti’s low-on-gas Aprilia hiccuped. Corti finished 0.167 of a second behind with Matthew Scholtz in third another 0.292 back and Bobby Fong fourth, minus 0.542.
“It’s a lot of fun battling with those guys because they’re a lot more aggressive than most riders here, and that’s what I like,” said Herrin, who won for the second time of the season. “It makes it really exciting and I like having that battle because it gets the rumble going in you and you want to try to fight back.”
Herrin rumbled through the second race in convincing fashion, beating Corti by 3.401 seconds.
Fuel wasn’t a factor in the second race. Officials cut a lap from the distance (13 instead of 14) to eliminate the safety risk posed by a rider running out in the pack.
Supersport/Superstock 600: Valentin Debise passed in Turn 5, built a gap through the Carousel and held off Garrett Gerloff on the main straight to give Suzuki its first victory of the season in Supersport by 0.095 of a second.
“I was looking for a win for a long time. That was my goal coming here,” said the Frenchman, who raced internationally last year in Moto2.
“I knew I couldn’t overtake him on this straight the way I did on the back straight, so I was focused to make for a very good lap.”
Bryce Prince led the way in Superstock 600 by 0.799 over Richie Escalante in a reverse of their finish Saturday.
KTM RC Cup: Ashton Yates, the 17-year-old son of champion rider Aaron Yates, scored his first victory in the development division, moving to the lead off the final corner and edging Jody Barry by 0.049 of a second.
