SUPERBIKE SHOOTOUT SERIES
VOL. 51 ISSUE 18 MAY 6, 2014 P81
wanted it to be."
And although it was Fong's
hometown race (he lives only an
hour and half away in his home
town of Stockton), he admitted
it's a track for some reason he
struggles on.
"I don't know what it is every
time I come here I struggle more
with the bike and myself every
weekend," Fong said. "Front
grip, rear grip, pretty much every-
thing. Basically it was me. I got
out-rode today."
Behind Gerloff and Fong, a
close battle for third was waged.
Jake Zemke was leading it, but
the rookie Joe Roberts was nip-
ping at his heels. And joining that
train was Team H35's Benny So-
lis, whose hard-charging efforts
were making up from a poor start.
In the end those efforts all went
up in a cloud of dust as the lead-
er of the train, Zemke, highsided
in turn 3A and Roberts and Solis
were too close behind to not end
up on the ground behind him.
"We were all within maybe a
foot from each other," Solis ex-
plained. "We were really close
all three of us. Zemke… I don't
know exactly what happened.
It looked like he highsided and
Joe and I were way too close to
avoid it. I tried to not hit Joe and
I crashed. I hit the wall. We all
crashed pretty hard."
Fortunately, all three riders
were sore but uninjured in the
melee.
Tuned Racing's Bryce Prince
narrowly missed the crash and
moved into third, his career best
Sportbike finish.
In fourth came Gerloff's team-
mate JD Beach. Behind Beach
were two privateer Yamahas –
ridden by Chad Lewin and Mi-
chael Gilbert. Finishing seventh
was Cycle News' test rider and
Northern California native Tom
Montano. Stephen Rue, Jason
Catching and Darren James
rounded out the top 10.
YOU CAN'T BLAME THE YOUTH
Beaubier had a perfect weekend
at his home race. Well not exactly
perfect. There was good and bad
news… the good news was his
error didn't cost him the race, the
bad news it was celebrating the
race win. And it was embarrass-
ing for the youngster.
"I'm a dummy that's what that
is," Beaubier explained in the
post-race press conference.
But his teammate had to inter-
ject.
"Can I answer that," Hayes
asked? "He joined an elite crew
of world-class riders – Aaron
Yates, Max Biaggi, there's a list
of them. Yates was probably the
most popular. There's a couple
that looped him [Yates] over
backwards."
