2021 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship
Round 9 – Barber Motorsport Park, Alabama
Images by Brian J. Nelson
The 2021 MotoAmerica Superbike championship wrapped up at Barber Motorsports Park over the weekend, with challenging conditions ensuring plenty of spectacle. Jake Gagne’s run of wins was also brought to an end, with Cameron Peterson claiming the Race 1 win, Mathew Scholtz winning Race 2, before Gagne returned to the top step of the podium for the final race of the season.
Jake Lewis also won the Superbike Cup crown for competing on Stock 1000 machinery in the Honos Superbike class.
Sean Dylan Kelly won Race 1 in the Supersport class, with Gabriel Da Silva taking his debut win in the class in Race 2. Jake Lewis meanwhile claimed the final Stock 1000 win, marking his sixth of the season and fourth in a row, to add to the title.
Kaleb De Keyrel brought home the final Twins Cup win of the year, having also already won the championship. Tyler Scott won both Junior Cup races, with Kayla Yaakov becoming the first female rider on the podium since 2018, with second in Race 1.
Honos Superbike Race 1
One of the most dramatic races in AMA Superbike history took place in the rainstorm at Barber Motorsports Park on Saturday and it’s one that won’t soon be forgotten, especially if your last name is Petersen, Scholtz or Baz.
Petersen earned his first-career MotoAmerica Superbike win after surviving a crash in the downpour. Mathew Scholtz finished second after surviving a crash in the downpour. Oh, and Loris Baz finished third after also surviving a crash in the downpour. And that translates to the unbelievable fact that all three podium finishers crashed in the same race in which they podiumed for the first time in AMA Superbike history.
Petersen’s first HONOS Superbike win made him the 62nd rider in history to win an AMA Superbike race and the second from South Africa. The win also went a long way to solidifying Petersen’s hold on third in the 2021 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship with two races left to run on Sunday.
Petersen also teamed up with Mother Nature to stop Jake Gagne’s win streak at 16 with the newly crowned 2021 MotoAmerica Superbike Champion crashing out of the lead on the second lap, remounting, pitting for repairs, and then ending up 12th.
Petersen and Scholtz battled at the front of the pack after Gagne’s demise. Then Petersen crashed in turn one and Scholtz held court at the front by himself. Then came the fateful 15th lap and Scholtz was down, the South African sliding from the crest of the hill out of turn four all the way down to turn five. He remounted but Petersen had already splashed past and was on his way to victory.
Baz was fortunate to be able to race at all after a crash on Friday left him beaten up with a damaged right wrist. Since he wasn’t able to take part in the qualifying sessions, he was also forced to start from the back row. He charged through the pack and caught the battle between Scholtz and Petersen, before suffering his crash and remounting in ninth place.
From there he charged again and worked his way back to third for his seventh podium finish of the season. The wet conditions made it a bit easier on his injured wrist, but the crash in the race left him with barely a nub for a right footpeg and a right handlebar that was bent almost to the tank.
Fourth place went to Jones Honda’s Ashton Yates on his Stock 1000-spec Honda CBR1000 RR-R, the Georgian earning the first top-five Superbike finish of his career. It also gave him the victory in the Superbike Cup and put a Honda in a top four that featured four different brands of motorcycles – Suzuki, Yamaha, Ducati and Honda.
Jake Lewis was fifth, which earned him the Superbike Cup crown (and the $25,000 that goes with it) for racers riding their Stock 1000-spec motorcycles in the HONOS Superbike races. It was a good day for the Superbike Cup riders with Danny Eslick ending up sixth.
David Anthony was seventh on his Superbike-spec Suzuki GSX-R1000 and less than a second ahead of Hector Barbera. Ninth place went to Josh Herrin, who was another crasher able to remount and finish. Bobby Fong rounded out the top 10.
Honos Superbike Races 2 & 3
Despite horrendous weather, the 2021 MotoAmerica Superbike Series ended as it should have with Jake Gagne winning a record 17th race to put an exclamation point on a season like no other.
Gagne, who earlier in the season set a record with 13 straight wins, didn’t win his record-extending 17th race in a row in Saturday’s race one, and he didn’t win it in race two on Sunday morning, but he did take that 17th victory in the season finale on Sunday afternoon at Barber Motorsports Park.
Twenty starts, 17 victories, 18 podiums and 445 championship points. That was Gagne’s year with the Fresh N’ Lean Attack Performance Yamaha team as they simply scorched the competition in putting together a season that is unprecedented in AMA Superbike history.
The cherry on top is that Gagne’s victory in race three at Barber – the 17th of his season and career – on Sunday put him into a tie with Nicky Hayden for eighth on the all-time AMA Superbike win list.
Jake Gagne
“What a way to finish the year. Yesterday was chaos. We all threw it down, but I couldn’t get it back up in time. The race earlier today, we weren’t too happy with it. We had some issues and we sorted it out and we were ready to go out there and try to win this thing in race three. Hats off to this team. It’s been an incredible year. Seventeen wins is unbelievable, especially against a field this deep and talented, these amazing teams. These guys are world-class riders. We did our work. We focused on what we needed to focus on and cranked out laps. I gave it my all every single lap of every single race, and it worked out most of the time. I feel blessed and I’m just lucky to have such a great crew, such an amazing motorcycle. I’ve had more fun than ever racing motorcycles, so life is good. It’s going to be nice to have a little break here, but we’ll be back to work and ready to keep fighting with these guys next year. It’s going to be hard to beat that year. Nothing but hard work to come and we’ll just keep chipping away.”
Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz had his best weekend of the year, despite crashing out of the lead but remounting to finish second in Saturday’s Mother Nature race. Scholtz made up for his Saturday miscue with his fourth career Superbike victory on Sunday morning (in a race that was stopped a few laps early when a deer ran across the wet track in front of Scholtz) and followed that up with a second-place finish behind Gagne in race three – another wet race – on Sunday afternoon.
Loris Baz was also on the podium in both races on Sunday with a second-place finish in race two in the morning and a third in race three on Sunday afternoon. Baz doesn’t like to do things the easy way and his third-place finish came after a crash early in the race with an impressive fight back through the pack to follow.
With Scholtz, Baz and Gagne owning the podium in both races on Sunday, Saturday’s first-time winner Cameron Petersen was fourth in race two on the M4 ECSTAR Suzuki, then crashed in race three, remounted and finished fifth, giving him a 1-4-5 weekend tally.
Jones Honda’s Ashton Yates came close to giving Honda a podium on his CBR1000RR-R in race three, but the Georgian gave up the spot late in the race to the flying Baz. Still, Yates had his best Superbike weekend ever with two fourths and a sixth.
Kyle Wyman ended his season with a sixth in race three to go with a seventh in race two, the New Yorker finishing well clear of Corey Alexander in race three. Bobby Fong had a rough weekend and he ended it with two eighth-place finishes on Sunday. Jake Lewis wrapped up the Superbike Cup on Sunday and picked up his $25,000 check after finishing ninth in race three. Earlier in the day, Lewis had put his Stock 1000-spec GSXR-1000 into fifth.
Gagne’s Fresh N’ Lean Attack Performance Yamaha teammate Josh Herrin erred by fitting slick tires to his Yamaha YZF-R1 in race two and eventually pulled out of the race. On Sunday afternoon, with rain tires fitted, Herrin ended up 10th.
HONOS Superbike Results
Source: MCNews.com.au