Press Release | July 11, 2024
The MotoAmerica Steel Commander Superbike Championship Heads To WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca For All-Important Round Six, July 12-14
Irvine, CA (July 10, 2024) – If the MotoAmerica Steel Commander Superbike Championship were a three-course meal, we’d be licking our chops and getting set to dive into the steak and potatoes. Already consumed are the appetizers (Road Atlanta and Barber) and the salad (Brainerd and Ridge). Now you just hope you didn’t overeat because the big plate is in the kitchen (Laguna Seca and Mid-Ohio) and it’s likely to determine who will still be at the table for dessert (COTA and New Jersey).
This is a press release from MotoAmerica…
Bobby Fong leads Jake Gagne by just one point and the top four riders in the Steel Commander Superbike Championship are separated by just nine points as the series heads to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, July 12-14. Photo by Brian J. Nelson
And it’s oh so close. In fact, it’s never been closer as what we’re currently experiencing has never happened in the history of AMA Superbike racing – four riders vying for the title after 11 races and separated by just nine points. Nine points. Four riders.
And one of the most popular rounds on the calendar awaits as WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca beckons with two Steel Commander Superbike races and 50 points awaiting anyone who can do the double.
Wrench Motorcycles’ Bobby Fong sits atop the 2024 Steel Commander Superbike Championship point standings with 158 points as the series heads to the iconic circuit on the Monterey Peninsula. That’s one better than three-time and defending MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Jake Gagne (157 points), seven better than Gagne’s Attack Performance/Progressive/Yamaha Racing teammate Cameron Petersen (151 points) and nine more than Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati’s Josh Herrin (149 points).
And all four of the riders at the top have proven to be capable of winning championships. In addition to his three MotoAmerica Superbike titles, Gagne also has a 2014 AMA Daytona Sportbike title and a 2015 MotoAmerica Superstock 1000 Championship; Fong has the 2019 MotoAmerica Supersport title on his resume; Petersen won the MotoAmerica Stock 1000 Championship in 2020; and Herrin won an AMA Superbike Championship in 2013 and a MotoAmerica Superstock 1000 title in 2015.
But back to this year. Fong arrives at this point in the season after winning two races with four additional podiums. He also has just one DNF and that came in race one at Ridge Motorsports Park when he, like several others, opted for slicks when he should have chosen rain tires. Rain has been Fong’s bugaboo, but he likely won’t face that at “the dry lake” in July. There’s also the fact that despite it being his “home” round, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca isn’t at the top of Fong’s list of favorites.
After getting hit with arm-pump issues that first reared its ugly head at Barber Motorsports Park, Gagne is the exact opposite of Fong when it comes to rain. He relishes the possibility as a wet racetrack takes a lot of the pressure of his arms and his best results this season have come in the rain. Case in point, Gagne’s only victory in 2024 came in the wet in race two at Road Atlanta in April. And his three podiums since then have all been in the wet. Still, Gagne has hung in there during what is a frustrating time with results like fifths, sevenths, eighths, and ninths somehow keeping him in contention.
It remains to be seen if Gagne’s physical condition will allow him to run at the front at Laguna or not, but there are plans to try something else with the arm issue during the one-month break between rounds six and seven (Mid-Ohio).
Gagne’s teammate Petersen is having his best season of Superbike racing to date with his three victories and four additional podiums putting him seven points out of the championship points lead. Petersen had a big crash in the first of two races at WeatherTech Raceway last year, but these things don’t seem to slow the South African.
Herrin heads to WeatherTech Raceway nine points adrift of Fong and with two race wins and three other podium finishes. He has clawed his way back into championship contention after a crash in race two at Road America marred his points tally. Although he recently won race two at Ridge Motorsports Park, Herrin was another who chose the wrong tires for race one, though he was able to soldier through to finish 11th.
Herrin is a fan of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca (he even wrapped up his lone AMA Superbike title there in 2013) and the Ducati Panigale V4 has proven to work well there.
Okay, four riders, nine points. So that’s about it, right? Well…
… maybe not.
Herrin’s teammate Loris Baz is fifth heading into the Laguna round, 36 points behind Fong, in his return season of MotoAmerica Superbike racing. Baz loves WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and in his last visit in 2021 he finished a fighting second to Gagne in both races.
TopPro Racing’s Sean Dylan Kelly, in his rookie season of MotoAmerica Superbike racing, is sixth, 51 points off the lead. Those two are longshots, but it’s never over in a season full of parity like this one where a bad day for even the cream of the crop can end up being an eighth-place finish.
The racer who is seventh in the championship and 55 points behind Fong may be the one who instills the most fear in the six riders ahead of him. That rider is five-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Cameron Beaubier.
Beaubier crashed out of race one at Road America at the end of May, suffered a broken right heel, and consequently missed the next three races. In his comeback race at Ridge Motorsports Park following surgery, Beaubier failed to score a point in the first race after opting for slicks instead of rain tires, then followed that up with a conservative eighth-place finish.
If Beaubier’s health/fitness has improved over the past two weeks, he could be a factor going forward. Especially so at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca where he has won nine AMA Superbike races – more races than any other rider in AMA Superbike history. We must also remember that Beaubier won three of the first five MotoAmerica races this year before his season unraveled with the Road America crash.
Beaubier’s teammate JD Beach will be hoping to give his season another kickstart as he is coming off a less-than-stellar weekend at Ridge Motorsports Park. Beach is eighth in the championship with his lone podium coming in race two at Road America.
Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Brandon Paasch is ninth in the title chase, 12 points behind Beach and 14 ahead of 10th-ranked Hayden Gillim and his Stock 1000-spec Real Steel Motorsports Honda CBR1000RR-R SP.
Pre-Race Laguna Seca Notes…
Cameron Beaubier won two of the three Superbike races last year at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with Jake Gagne winning the other. Gagne won race one with Josh Herrin second and PJ Jacobsen third. Beaubier topped Gagne and Herrin in race two before beating Herrin and Gagne in race two. Last year, Gagne left Monterey with a 34-point lead in the Superbike title chase.
In addition to winning two races, Beaubier also claimed pole position with his 1:22.959 lap of the 2.238-mile racetrack. The fastest race lap a year ago was also set by Beaubier with his 1:23.308 on the second lap.
The MotoAmerica Superbike lap record at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca is still held by Josh Herrin with his 1:22.908 dating back to Superpole in 2018. The race lap record, meanwhile, is held by Beaubier with his 1:23.185 coming in race three in 2020.
Cameron Beaubier is the all-time AMA Superbike race winner at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca with the five-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion carding nine wins at the track in the hills east of Monterey. The second most wins among active racers is five, a mark held by Jake Gagne.
WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has a long history of hosting AMA Superbike races with the first-ever Superbike race at the track on the Monterey Peninsula taking place in 1976 and won by Reg Pridmore.
With his most recent win at Ridge Motorsports Park two weeks ago, Josh Herrin moved out of a tie with Anthony Gobert for 19th on the all-time AMA Superbike win list and into a tie with Doug Chandler for 17th. Chandler and Herrin have 12 AMA Superbike wins to their credit.
The fourth annual “Rainey’s Ride To The Races” will take place on Friday, July 12 with several legends of the sport scheduled to take part in the ride and then stay for the races. The legends include Eddie Lawson, Bubba Shobert, Rick Johnson, Scott Parker, Doug Chandler, Thomas Stevens, Miguel Duhamel, Ben Spies and John Kocinski.
MotoAmerica Support Classes at Monterey
The Baggers Are Back In Town For WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca
Four Support Classes, Led By The Mission King Of The Baggers, Set For Monterey Invasion, July 12-14
The Mission King Of The Baggers class returns to where it all began this coming weekend when the MotoAmerica Superbike Championship and its four support classes resume their battles at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the birthplace of the King Of The Baggers series, July 12-14.
The Mission King Of The Baggers Championship resumes at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend in Monterey, California. Photo by Brian J. Nelson
Now knee deep in its fourth season as one of the most popular classes in the MotoAmerica Championship, the Mission King Of The Baggers returns to action after a one-month hiatus for its sixth round and it does so at the track where it all started – WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
The big V-twins roar into town with Australian Troy Herfoss and his S&S Cycles/Indian Motorcycle Challenger atop the championship point standings after 10 races, but it’s tight at the top with Harley-Davidson Factory Racing’s Kyle Wyman just 13 points behind in what has become a two-rider, two-manufacturer battle for the 2024 crown.
Herfoss has earned his 205 points via four wins, four seconds, a third and, for him, a lowly seventh. Wyman’s tally comes via four wins, three seconds, a fifth, a fourth, and an unlikely eighth.
Those two are miles ahead of the rest with Tyler O’Hara the best of the rest and 63 points behind his teammate Herfoss. Defending Mission King Of The Baggers Champion Hayden Gillim put some life back in his title hopes with two victories at the last round in Brainerd, Minnesota. Still, the RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson rider is 70 points behind Herfoss.
Wyman’s teammate James Rispoli rounds out the top five in the point standings heading to Monterey, 97 points from the top spot.
Supersport – Scholtz Pulls Away
The 2024 MotoAmerica Supersport Championship was ultra-close right up to the point where it wasn’t. That point came in race two at Ridge Motorsports Park when championship rivals Mathew Scholtz and PJ Jacobsen came together and Jacobsen got the worst of it, hitting the deck and failing to score a point. Meanwhile, Strack Racing’s Scholtz rode away to an easy win, his sixth of the season and fourth in a row.
And just like that, the spread between Scholtz and Jacobsen is now 28 points.
But catching Scholtz isn’t out of the realm of possibility for Jacobsen as the Rahal Ducati Moto rider has won three races and had been on the podium in each and every race… until the Ridge debacle. There’s plenty of fight still to come from the New Yorker.
Altus Motorsports’ Jake Lewis is third in the championship with the Kentuckian finishing every race thus far with two podiums and solidly consistent finishes. He trails Scholtz by 115 points.
Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Tyler Scott is fourth in the title chase, despite an up-and-down season thus far. Scott is the only rider other than Scholtz and Jacobsen to win a race so far in 2024.
N2 Racing/BobbleHeadMoto’s Blake Davis rounds out the top five heading to Laguna Seca.
Stock 1000 – Gillim Hanging On
Real Steel Motorsports’ Hayden Gillim should be breathing easier than he is. With wins in four of the six Stock 1000 races held thus far in 2024, Gillim has been the clear-cut favorite to defend his title from a year ago. The other two races are what have kept things close at the top.
Leading in race two at Brainerd International Raceway after destroying the class in race one, Gillim crashed. Leading race two at Ridge Motorsports Park early on, Gillim crashed again. This time he was able to remount and fly through the pack to finish a remarkable fourth. That fourth turned into a sixth, however, in the official results as Gillim was docked two seconds after failing to make the turn-one chicane after crossing the finish line.
OrangeCat Racing’s Jayson Uribe has been in the catbird seat for both of Gillim’s miscues and he’s been there to pick up the pieces in both cases. The result? The Californian trails the Kentuckian by just six points with the series set for two races at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Jones Honda’s Ashton Yates has seen his season pick up speed of late and he’s now third in the point standings after four podium finishes in the past four races. He trails Gillim by 23 points and is only four points ahead of FLO4LAW Racing’s Benjamin Smith. BPR Racing’s Bryce Prince is nine additional points behind Smith and rounds out the top five after six races.
Mission Super Hooligan National Championship – The Champ Leads
Defending series champion Tyler O’Hara battled through a difficult weekend at Ridge Motorsports Park but somehow came out of it all with the lead in the Mission Super Hooligan National Championship.
O’Hara bravely rode his S&S Cycles/Indian Motorcycle FTR1200 to a third-place finish in race one at Ridge, using the clutch to slow the bike as he battled a sticking throttle for the entire race. He later said it was the best third-place finish of his career. A day later, O’Hara was second as Saddlemen Racing/Harley-Davidson’s Jake Lewis and his Pan America were simply too much for the rest of the field.
Saturday’s win went to KWR/Harley-Davidson’s Cody Wyman with the youngest of the racing Wyman brothers scoring his first Super Hooligan win of his career. In doing so, he also became the second rider in MotoAmerica history to podium in four different classes – Junior Cup, Twins Cup, Stock 1000 and the Super Hooligan National Championship. The first rider to accomplish that feat was Rocco Landers whose podium finish at Brainerd in June brought his tally to four classes with podium finishes, including Junior Cup, Twins Cup, and Supersport earlier in his career.
O’Hara now leads Wyman by five points as the series arrives in Monterey for its third round. Saddlemen/Harley-Davidson’s Cory West sits third, 12 behind O’Hara and eight ahead of Troy Herfoss on the second S&S Cycles/Indian Motorcycle FTR1200. Lewis rounds out the top five and is 24 points behind O’Hara.
Pre-WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca Notes…
Hayden Gillim and Kyle Wyman split wins in last year’s two Mission King Of The Baggers races at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Gillim beat James Rispoli and Bobby Fong to win race one with Wyman topping Rispoli and Gillim to win race two.
Last year’s “Extended” Supersport race win went to Xavi Forés over Josh Hayes and Tyler Scott. The win was Forés’s eighth win in a row, which broke Garrett Gerloff’s consecutive win streak in the class from 2017.
Jeremy McWiliams was a perfect two-for-two in the Mission Super Hooligan National Championship races in Monterey last year. McWilliams beat Andy DiBrino and Cory West in race one before topping Tyler O’Hara and DiBrino in race two.
The Stock 1000 class didn’t compete at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca last year as the program featured Superbike, Supersport, Mission King Of The Baggers, Twins Cup, and Super Hooligan National Championship.
MotoAmerica How To Watch: MotoAmerica Superbike Speedfest at Monterey
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