RACING CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 54 ISSUE 19 MAY 16, 2017 P83
on me," Gerloff said. "He [Val-
entin Debise] ran it in there and
sometimes it can be a little bit
much. It got me a little bit fired
up and I wanted to get by him by
out-braking him into turn one,
but his brake lever or something
hit the back of my leg. I didn't
know what happened, but he
likes to race close and I like to
race close and it is what it is."
Second-placed Beach teamed
up with Gerloff to throw another
barb Debise's way during the
post race interviews.
"He's [Debise] definitely not
a bad rider or anything, but it for
sure spooked me and I'm pretty
sure he ended up going down as
well," Beach said. "He almost hit
Debise used the tricky condi-
tions to his advantage to claim
pole position for race one and
immediately engaged in hand-
to-hand combat with Beach and
Gerloff on the opening lap. Con-
tact was made between Debise
and Gerloff in the very first
corner, a prequel of what was
to come a lap later as Debise
and the current champion, once
again, touched, only this time
the Frenchman came off second
best as he hit the wet grass,
folding the front and destroying
his GSX-R600.
"The first corner I felt like I
was on my line and I just got
tagged from the back and ended
up with some gnarly tire marks
SUPERSPORT/
SUPERSTOCK 600
How quickly times change. Last
round at Road Atlanta we were
seeing the emergence of Valen-
tin Debise as a serious title con-
tender, this time around the M4
Ecstar Suzuki pilot left with a big
fat zero against his name after
two race crashes and a 49-point
championship deficit to make up
for the rest of the year.
Instead, it was the champion-
ship Monster Energy/Yamalube/
YES/Graves Yamaha team of
Garrett Gerloff and JD Beach
who emerged as victors and
solid championship favorites
even at this early stage of the
season.
Leave a door open to JD
Beach at your peril! Beach
got his inner dirt tracker out
in race two and stole the
win from under teammate
Gerloff on the last lap.
