Cycle News

SUPERBIKE AMA SUPERBIKE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUNDS 3-4/MAY 31-JUNE 1, 2014 ROAD AMERICA/ELKHART LAKE, WISCONSIN P38 would not only have established a decent gap on sec- ond, he would have opened up more than a full race's advantage over primary threat Hayes. However, that's not how a hectic Sunday race day would play out. Over the first half of Sunday's race, Hayes, Carde- nas, and Beaubier were glued to one another in a three-man breakaway at the front. Saturday's winner seemed content to just sit and wait in third, reminis- cent of his preferred Daytona SportBike tactics. He looked composed and comfortable, clicking off the race's fastest lap while running generally tidier lines than his opponents. Or so it appeared. Beaubier erred in making an overnight set-up change; while the bike worked even better on exit than before, he was struggling with cor- ner-entrance feel. That miscalculation cost him might- ily in turn one on lap six as he pitched it away, leav- ing Hayes and Cardenas to settle the race amongst themselves. My Own Race: 2 CAMERON BEAUBIER 1ST/13TH Sunday's race didn't follow Cameron Beaubier's script, as a set-up change and the weather conditions wreaked havoc with his hopes for a double win. "We made a couple changes to the suspension going into today and it felt awe- some getting off the corner, but I just had a lack of feel going in. My front-end was kind of bouncing around. I got in a little deep in [turn] one and it just tucked on me - kind of out of nowhere - which was a bummer. After the race was red flagged my team got everything together last minute, and I went out to just try to salvage some points. I'm not really sure what happened there at the end. I know it was declared a wet race, but not throwing a red flag kind of put us riders in danger. I crashed going 2 mph - going as slow as I could. But I'm glad everyone got out of here safe and I hope everyone learned something this weekend." 11 CHRIS FILLMORE 7TH/5TH The KTM/HMC Racing crew had a difficult weekend at their home race. "The whole weekend… I'm glad it's over," Fillmore said. "It didn't start good and it didn't really end well, despite the fifth place. It was a tough race with the conditions. I'm just lucky I walked away and got out of here with some points. But overall, crappy weekend. Ever since Friday, we've been struggling with electrical problems. Ev- ery single session I had something wrong with the bike -- it wasn't until [Sunday] morning that the thing worked the way it should work. In Saturday's race, the ECU went bad so I had no quickshifter and it was feeding wrong information to the bike. On [Sunday], things were pretty good but we were so far behind - we never had a chance to mess with set-up because something was always wrong with the bike. It was 'run what you brung.' It was going pretty good before the first red flag. And then in the second, it was going well, but I ran wide in [turn] one and fell into this big battle… and then it started pissing down rain, which was wild. It was surreal, coming down this front straight wide open and then right before the brake markers, torrential downpour. It was wild. I ended up crashing in the race. I told myself I wasn't going to get hurt, just slowly pick my way through people, and I think I was third on the last lap. I hit one of those rivers and as I was just cruising, all the sudden I was in the air." 6 CHRIS CLARK 6TH/4TH Yoshimura Suzuki's Chris Clark continued his strong start to the '14 season, picking up his third fourth-place result in four races. He even challenged teammate Roger Hayden for third at times on Sunday. "It was a really positive week- end overall," Clark said. "We really stepped up from last year. We made some big improvements and were pretty much three seconds quicker than last year. [Sunday] was a really strange day. From the beginning of the day stuff was happening - just weird stuff - left and right. We were just hoping to get the Superbike race to stay dry. At least have one race where something didn't go wrong. I had a decent David Anthony had another solid weekend, the Australian finishing fifth and second in the two races.

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