Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/997997
ROAD RACE ROUND 5 / JUNE 22-24, 2018 WEATHERTECH RACEWAY / MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA P78 MOTOAMERICA ROAD RACING CHAMPIONSHIP it was going to be. Can't ever trust the weatherman. It's been difficult for sure. I think we kind of hurt ourselves racing World Superbike as well and not putting in as many laps in MotoAmerica practices as we should have to learn the tires. But that's just what we had to do to make sure we minimized the amount of time I was on the bike to be able to finish the races today. Just happy to be up here, to be honest. It feels good to be in second. I was pretty disappointed at first just because the weekend was going so well with MotoAmer- ica practices. I was real confident we were going to be able to fight up front the whole time. Cam was riding a hell of a race. I don't know how much of a difference or how much the tires came into play. I was definitely sliding a lot, but it could have been the same for him." Roger Hayden (Yoshimura Suzuki), who started on the fourth row of the grid after crashing in Superpole, worked his way up to finish third. "Got a good start and made some passes pretty quick and got into third pretty early," Hayden said. "I tried to catch these guys, but it just wasn't happening. They [Beaubier and Herrin] were fast and just a little bit better than us today." Garrett Gerloff finished a little bit back in fourth, followed by Mathew Scholtz and Eslick. be honest I didn't really notice a huge difference on the tires in the practices and qualifying we did. That was the tire we decided to go with and I think it was the right choice. I felt pretty consistent the whole race. Hon- estly, from the start of the race my tires just felt kind of greasy. It's a little hotter than the past couple years here. I was able to get through the pack somewhat clean and slowly catch Herrin. It could have been a different story if Herrin didn't have a race before." "I did a lot of laps this week- end," said a tired Herrin. "It was a lot hotter than the weather said attempt a pass, but instead bided his time. After knocking on the door a few times, Beaubier finally invited himself in and made his move on the ninth of the 23-lap race. From that moment on, Beaubier slowly pulled away from Herrin taking the checkered flag with 5.403 seconds to spare. "That race was tough," Beau- bier said. "I got shuffled back. I got such a bad start, kind of like always. I need to work on those. Herrin was putting the laps together at first out front. I saw the red band on his tire and I noticed that he went with the super soft option, and I went with the second soft option. To Cameron Beaubier (6) and Josh Herrin (2) spent much of the weekend this close, battling for the lead in both Superbike races.