WESTBY RACING
NEWS AND UPDATES
Sunny Skies On Saturday At WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca Yield A Not-So-Sunny Result For Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz
Monterey, CA – July 13, 2019 –
On Saturday afternoon, under the bright sunshine at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, things didn’t turn out quite so sunny for Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz as “The Corkscrew,” Laguna Seca’s iconic, signature feature, reached up and bit him, resulting in him crashing his #11 Yamaha YZF-R1 Superbike out of race one, ironically, on lap 11 of the 23-lap event.
Starting from the second row of the grid after qualifying fifth in Superpole, Mathew was running in fifth place and looking to hunt down the race leaders when he lost the front end of his Yamaha at the top of turn 8 and ended his day.
“Yesterday, we kind of missed the first qualifying practice because we had a little bit of a mechanical issue, so the second qualifying practice was a little bit of catching up for us,” commented Mathew as he talked about his weekend so far. “We knew that the bike wasn’t set up perfectly yet, and I was still getting into my groove. For this morning’s practice, we changed a few things, and I definitely got faster. With Superpole right after that, we didn’t want to make any changes, and I ended up qualifying fifth, which wasn’t too bad.
“We made a couple of changes before the race, and they were definitely beneficial. I was running fifth in the race and going backwards and forwards slightly, then, coming into The Corkscrew, I lost the front and slid out of the race. I’m really disappointed because I was barely on the edge, doing a comfortable pace, and I just crashed out. I have to say sorry to my Westby crew because I shouldn’t have crashed. We looked at the data, and we definitely found out where we can make the bike better. So, in tomorrow morning’s warmup, we’ll try the new settings and see if we can improve in tomorrow’s race.”
As Mathew alluded to, he and the team will try again tomorrow when Superbike Race 2 goes green at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on Sunday at 3:15 PM Pacific Time.
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