CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 52 ISSUE 32 AUGUST 11, 2015 P87
Briefly...
Beaubier and Hayden had previous
experience at Indy—Beaubier on a
125cc Grand Prix machine in 2009
and Hayden in Moto 2 in 2010.
Local racers Gene Burcham and
Matt Carr were featured promi-
nently in Indy's buildup to its first
MotoAmerica event. Burcham is a
veteran racer who has raced spo-
radically in AMA Superbike since the
early 1990s. Carr, co-owner of a lo-
cal Ducati dealership, was making
his MotoAmerica debut. Burcham
crashed in practice and did not
qualify for the race. Carr qualified
his Ducati and finished eighth in Su-
perstock 1000 in race one and 11th
in race two. "I played it safe on the
start and then opened it up and got
13th, eighth in class," Carr said. "To
race on this circuit, the same one the
MotoGP riders raced, was just awe-
some. In race two we made a little
bit of a wrong tire choice and I was
back a few spots from yesterday's
race. I was sliding around a lot and
didn't do as well, but it was kind of
fun racing in front of all the fans that
were here. I'm real proud of my crew
and just having this experience was
amazing."
Taylor Knapp had a scary experi-
ence in Saturday's Superbike/Su-
perstock race one. He said the han-
dlebar came loose during the race.
"I saw [Jake] Gagne coming back to
us and I was ready to pull the trig-
ger with three or four laps to go and
the handlebar came loose," Knapp
explained. "I noticed my brake lever
was really high. I thought it was just
the lever folding up and then when I
was changing direction I felt it bend-
ing back and forth. I thought it was
start, but was able to reel Josh
[Hayes] in and had a great battle
with him," Lewis said. "In race
one, I was about six seconds
back from the winner and today
only five seconds. I really wanted
to get a podium, especially here
at Indy, and I came up just short,
but I'm still pretty happy with the
weekend. I'm looking forward to
New Jersey."
next month.
Superbike rookie Jake Lewis
had what he said was one of his
best weekends of the season,
in spite of ending up fourth in
both races. He chased down
and raced with Hayes in Satur-
day's race, no doubt soaking up
valuable information from Hayes'
riding in the process.
"On Saturday I got a bad
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