Bobby Fong wins VIR Superbike Round 6, Race 1, Josh Herrin slips to third
Fong's victory was never in question. Starting from the pole, he led the 20-lap race flag-to-flag as he forced Beaubier into an uncomfortable pace.
'I think with both these guys behind you, it's always a concern for all of us,' Fong said in a news release. 'You could hear him (Beaubier), too. I could hear his bike. I knew it wasn't Josh (Herrin) because you always can hear the Ducati compared to the BMW. I could tell he was faster in some areas, because you could hear the bike getting a lot closer. I was like, 'I just got to keep my pace, keep my head down.' I was waiting for the moment for him to definitely make a move, for sure. It never came, fortunately for me. We've always been pretty good at that at these races.
'The bike always sounds pretty good at the end of the races. Somehow, I manage to keep the same pace at the end. We just got to keep doing our thing. It's going to be a long season. We got some tracks where these two dudes are definitely a step above me. So, I need to work on some of the racetracks we're going to. We're just going to keep our head down and tomorrow is another day. I'm sure Josh is going to find something overnight and be a lot closer, and same with this guy (Beaubier). It's definitely going to be more of a dogfight tomorrow with all three of us.'
Beaubier kept pace with Fong for as long as possible, pushing his tires to their maximum performance. Beginning to lose grip, he was forced to moderate his pace and finished more than seven seconds behind the leader.
'It was good to crawl a couple points back,' Beaubier said. 'Coming in here, we wanted to win. We come into every round wanting to win. I think I can say we had a little issue yesterday in the first practice, and we didn't get a ton of dry time. But those are all excuses. He (Fong) was on freaking rails. He was riding so good. I kept looking at my dash and it was high 24s, high 24s, mid 24s on used tires. Then I saw a gap back to third. I was like, 'wow, we are ripping.'
'It was only a matter of time where I could hang on. I had to kind of let him go. I was taking a lot of risks getting into the corners to make up the lack of edge and grip I had compared to him. But at the beginning, I was really happy with how I was riding.'
After winning five consecutive races, Josh Herrin has gradually lost pace. His fifth straight win came in the first race of the Monterey tripleheader before he slotted into second in both Sunday races at Laguna Seca. On Saturday in Virginia, he had to fight back a determined challenge by Sean Dylan Kelley just to stand on the podium.
Contact between the two could have been disastrous as Kelly bumped Herrin in Turn 1 on the final lap and then struck him harder later during that same lap. Herrin maintained his seat and finished third by 0.144 seconds ahead of Kelly.
'I thought that those guys would have just dusted by me,' Herrin said. 'I wasn't trying to really be protective until the last two or three laps. So, it didn't surprise me, but the moves that Sean put on me on the last lap would have been like four races in a row of double long-lap penalty in MotoGP these days, so I was surprised about that. He hit me hard. The first time he rubbed me; it left some marks on the leathers. That surprised me, but it was fun.'
Herrin was upset with the contact.
'Then this time, it was just a blatant, like there's no room,' Herrin continues. 'I'm not going to get by anywhere else. I'm making room. Slammed into the side of me. Fell off the inside of his bike. Almost took me out. Then knew what he did and waited for me to go by on the brakes, knowing that he needed to give up a position. What was in his head, I could tell. As soon as he saw me on the side of him, he just released brakes, rode around the outside of me and then tried doing the same thing going down the rollercoaster.
'It was the dirtiest riding that I've seen in a while. I'm an aggressive rider, like all these guys in the front. We'll get aggressive when we need to, but that was straight-up unsafe, like 'I'm just plowing through your right now riding.' So hopefully these guys do something about it because if it was me, I would have been starting back of the pack tomorrow. I've seen it happen time and time again.'
Fong's teammate, Jake Gagne, was part of the three-rider battle for the final podium spot, but backed his pace down during the final lap in case the two riders immediately ahead of him triggered a crash. Gagne finished fifth.
Herrin holds a 27-point advantage over Beaubier as the series heads into the second race of its VIR doubleheader.
Superbike Race 1 Top-10
Bobby Fong (Yamaha)
Cameron Beaubier (BMW)
Josh Herrin (Ducati)
Sean Dylan Kelly (Suzuki)
Jake Gagne (Yamaha)
JD Beach (Honda)
Ashton Yates (Honda)
Bryce Kornbau (Yamaha)
Richie Escalante (Suzuki)
Danilo Lewis (BMW)
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