CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 32 AUGUST 11, 2015 P95
the window."
But Gerloff's win wasn't
merely handed to him. It was
a hard-fought battle with Fong,
who was also hungry for his first
win of the season. Fong tried
to draft him across the line, but
was denied, falling short by .036
I broke a little bit early," Beach
answered when asked if he let
Gerloff through once the cham-
pionship battle was over. "He
was going for it. I think we had a
little bit of a team plan and I think
he knew that Herrin was out of
the race and the plan was out
teammate didn't need help to
clinch the title, so he went for it.
At least that's how Beach saw
"the pass."
"He [Gerloff] definitely had a
really good pass, but I saw my
signal [Herrin down] and I was
kind of caught off guard from it.
45 CAMERON PETERSEN 5
TH
RoadRace Factory Yamaha's Cameron Petersen has
steadily improved in his debut season in the U.S. Despite
a disappointing mistake, the South African was happy with
his pace and the race as a whole. "It was a good race,"
Petersen said. "The first starts, for the first couple of laps
I was up there with the front group and then made a few
mistakes. Then [Travis] Wyman got past me. I followed
him for a few laps. He had quite a good pace. And then
I got back past him and then Joe Roberts passed me a
little bit later. He was setting some really quick lap times.
So I tried to follow him and then the red flag came out
and we had a six-lap sprint race, which was pretty cool.
And then I felt really good in the second start of the race.
I was up there with JD [Beach] and fighting for a podium
position, which is good. And then yeah, going into the
last lap I hit a false neutral going into turn one and ran off
the track. So I'm a bit disappointed in myself, just stupid
mistakes. Overall just happy that we're making progress
and I'm getting closer to the front guys."
2 JOSH HERRIN 13
TH
For Josh Herrin, the six-lap sprint race after the restart
was an absolute disaster. "I ran wide going into turn two,"
Herrin said. "I went down to first gear just to make up for
it to try and get a good drive out of there. Whenever I was
getting on the gas I knew, okay, I need to go to second,
so I shifted to second and it just spit me off because it
was sliding and second just made it pop back. I got into
one of those crazy tank-slappers. It was a bummer, but
I had to lay it all out on the line because I had to beat JD
[Beach]. So I needed to try my hardest to try and get it.
It's a bummer, for sure, because we've been trying so
long to win this championship, but we go to New Jersey
with nothing to lose so we'll try and get the double there,
for sure. The team went back after Laguna [Seca] to the
shop and worked on the bikes. We got some power out of
it that we've been trying to get all year. We're finally able
to pull up alongside JD. All year we've been losing 10-bike
lengths down the straightaway so that helped a lot. Just a
stupid mistake. Sorry to the team."
Josh Herrin (2) and Fong (50) battled before the restart.
