No crash, but plenty of final-corner excitement as MotoAmerica rides out of Elkhart Lake

ELKHART LAKE – There was no three-way battle this time, no full-contact competition and no last-lap crash, but that was the unrealistic standard set by Saturday’s Superbike feature at Road America.

So Sunday’s crowd had to survive with just a two-man battle with three passes in the final two corners and the second-place rider skipping across the curbing while he twisted the throttle with all his might.

“Aw, that was nothin’, ” Josh Herrin said.

He was the one who came up short in the Dunlop Championship main event.

And he was serious.

“I feel like I can put the bike wherever I want it,” Herrin said with a big smile. “I can slide it when I need to slide it. And I can dive on the brakes when I need to dive on the brakes.”

So that’s what Herrin did, trying to get back the lead he had surrendered seconds earlier in Turn 12, the tricky right-hander known as Canada corner. Herrin dived under Cameron Beaubier, grabbed the position briefly and then went for a wild ride.

As Herrin put on his bike control clinic, Beaubier pulled away by 0.195 of a second for a weekend sweep.

“I was a little nervous going into Canada Corner behind him, because I knew he had the last section dialed,” Beaubier said. “I was able to sneak inside of him when he went a little wide.

“Man, I thought I was pretty protective going into the last corner, and somehow he found a way up the inside.”

Roger Hayden raced in the lead pack all day and finished third for his first podium of the year.

Sunday’s race took on a different flow from Saturday’s after Toni Elias over-shot Canada Corner and fell back into the pack. Without the late-braking Spaniard in their midst, Beaubier and Herrin were able to attack the corners – and each other – with a more comfortable rhythm.

A day earlier, Elias crashed while trying to defend Beaubier’s aggressive move. Elias won five of the first six races of the season, but Beaubier wrestled the series lead away from him with his Road America sweep.

A red flag for Matthew Scholtz’s crash broke the race into segments of five and eight laps. Scholtz, who went down in Turn 13, was shaken up but not seriously injured.

Supersport: JD Beach’s drift to the left in the final 200 yards was enough to hold off Valentin Debise by 0.037 of a second after a race-long drafting battle.

Enough to tick him off too.

Debise let Beach past on the 10th of 11 laps, knowing his best chance to win would be a slingshot move on the uphill run to start-finish line. But instead of hugging the pit wall to cut the wind, Beach gently moved his Yamaha to the outside.

“I could tell when I would pass him, I was riding hard and I couldn’t make any kind of gap at all,” Beach said. “And every time he did draft by me, he had some speed.

“I knew with the speed I had, I had to try something out of the last turn, and I just tried to do a different line than what I had been doing so it would kind of surprise him.”

Debise said the move – although not drastic – was enough to cause his Suzuki to wobble and force him to ease off the throttle.

The finish flipped the results of Saturday, when Debise won in his return from a crash in March.

Junior Cup: Kawasaki’s Ashton Yates pulled away after rival Alex Dumas crashed on the second of seven laps. Cory Ventura grabbed second place in a six-way battle, 7.869 seconds behind. Yates had finished second to Dumas on Saturday.

Stock 1000: Kawasaki rider Shane Richardson scored his first MotoAmerica victory, benefiting from an early crash by leader Travis Wyman.