Photography by Brian J. Nelson
JD Beach scored a hard-fought victory in MotoAmerica Supersport race one at Barber Motorsports Park Saturday. Beach held off three other riders who battled the entire 21 laps. Pole winner Josh Herrin was second and Bobby Fong third.
“Josh was pushing me hard the whole race,” Beach said. “I just did everything I could to win on that last lap. I think my dirt track background helped me with the start of the race. You sort of can win or lose those with the starts and I got a good one today for sure.”
Beach blasted up from the second row to lead the field into turn one, but it was Herrin moving on the inside of turn five to take over. Early on it was a leading quartet breaking away from the rest of the field with Herrin, Beach, Gerloff and Fong.
After a few laps Beach, who was able to hold a much tighter line in the turns, took back the lead from Herrin. Gerloff and Fong were battling for the final podium spot, about 10 bike lengths back – Gerloff still racing with a mending left pinky finger he broke at VIR. Tomas Puerta headed up the rest of the field in fifth.
Halfway through and it was Herrin once again going to the lead over Beach, then Beach again a couple of laps later in a classic seesaw battle between the leaders. All the battling between the two leaders allowed Fong and Gerloff to close in to make it a four-way fight.
On the final lap it was Beach out front. He put his head down in an effort to shake off the chasing trio and at first it looked like he’d about done it, but in the final turns Herrin made a last ditch effort and closed. The rear end on Herrin’s Yamaha was bouncing quite a bit under acceleration and hard cornering. He indicated that he thought he may have pushed too hard early and used up his tire and that’s what appeared to doom his bid to be in a position to pass Beach through the final sector.
Fong and his Triumph seemingly was able to gather up the leaders fairly easily, but once they were directly in front of him Fong said they were slowing him up in some corner entrances and then they had more squirt out of the corners making it nearly impossible for him to find a place to pass.
In the end the margin of victory for Beach was 0.268. Fong was third, 0.569 seconds behind and Gerloff fourth 1.2 seconds back. Puerta rounded out the top five over 25 seconds back from the leader.
Supersport Race 1 Results from Barber Motorsports Park – June 13, 2015
1 95 JD Beach 1:27.648 –.— –.— 1:27.648
2 2 Josh Herrin 1:27.630 0.268 0.268 1:27.630
3 50 Bobby Fong 1:27.833 0.596 0.328 1:27.805
4 31 Garrett Gerloff 1:28.173 1.209 0.613 1:27.744
5 12 Tomas Puerta 1:30.159 25.178 23.969 1:28.431
6 25 David Anthony 1:30.353 27.974 2.796 1:28.886
7 45 Cameron Petersen 1:31.620 32.609 4.635 1:28.742
8 86 Ben Young 1:30.911 42.325 9.716 1:29.242
9 51 Kaleb De Keyrel 1:30.647 57.234 14.909 1:30.208
10 69 Hayden Gillim 1:30.954 57.376 0.142 1:30.253
