Grantsville, UT – July 22, 2018 –

With two Superbike races in every MotoAmerica round, being able to race on both Saturday and Sunday is one of the things that riders and teams like best about the series. It gives those riders and teams a chance to take what they learned in the first race, make adjustments to the bikes, alter the race strategies, and prepare mentally for another opportunity.

 

The aim is always to improve on Saturday’s result, and for Mathew Scholtz and the Yamalube/Westby Racing team, they definitely hit the mark with a fourth-place finish that was two positions better than Saturday’s sixth-place result. And, an even bigger improvement was that Mathew moved back into third place in the Superbike Championship behind two factory riders who have won all the Superbike Championships thus far in the three-year history of MotoAmerica.

 

Starting from fourth position on the grid in Sunday’s race, Mathew recovered from a so-so launch off the line and proceeded to move forward and into a race-long battle for the podium. Ultimately, the “Durban Dynamo” crossed the finish line in the same position as he started the race, but he was just over half a second behind the third-place finisher.

 

“Saturday’s race didn't pan out the way we wanted it to,” commented Mathew. “But, we knew where we needed to make the bike better. Overnight, my crew worked really hard, and they came up with a good setup. The Sunday morning warmup went really great, and we ended up second-fastest. We knew we had good pace, and we were confident for the second race. My start was (laughs) absolutely shocking, but I made a few passes on the first lap, and I got into the group that was fighting for third. We had a race-long battle, and there weren’t too many passes because the pace was so high, and everyone was part of the train. Garrett (Gerloff) and (Jake) Lewis managed to gap Roger Hayden, and I managed to pass Roger with two laps to go. I kind of did close the gap to Lewis and Gerloff, but we ran out of laps. Overall, I’m very happy with the progress we made and the fact that we moved back into third place in the Championship. Obviously, we would have liked to be on the podium. Our pace was really good, and my team deserved a podium for all their hard work. We are heading to some tracks that suit our bike better, starting with Sonoma in a couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to that and to bringing the podium back to this Westby team.”

 

Round 7 of the 2018 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship will take place on August 10 through 12 at Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, CA.

 

MotoAmerica Superbike Standings

1. Cameron Beaubier – Yamaha – 248

2. Toni Elias – Suzuki – 199

3. Mathew Scholtz – Yamaha – 152
 

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