Gerloff Sweeps Supersport At Sonoma Raceway
Yamaha Supersport front-runner, Garrett Gerloff, stole the show at Sonoma Raceway for Round 7!
Paul Carruthers
The start wasn’t an exact repeat of Saturday’s Supersport race at Sonoma Raceway, but the outcome was the same as Monster Energy/Yamalube/Y.E.S./ Graves Yamaha’s Garrett Gerloff won again on Sunday, this time by 8.004 seconds over his teammate and championship rival JD Beach.
While Gerloff streaked away at the start of yesterday’s race, today he got off to a fourth-place start while Beach tried to make a break at the front. But before two laps were complete, Gerloff was out front. From there he methodically pulled away, a 10th of a second here, a 10th there until the gap at the finish was just a tick over eight seconds.
What an awesome weekend! Finally got a double this year in the books 🤘🏼 can't thank the whole team and all the awesome people around me for all that they do, you're the best! Let's go to Pittsburgh ✊🏼 #solideogloria #GG31 PC: @brianjnelsonphoto A post shared by Garrett Gerloff (@garrettgerloff) on Aug 13, 2017 at 6:51pm PDT
Beach managed to limit the damage to as little as possible, the Owensboro, Kentucky resident finishing second and losing five more points to his teammate Gerloff, who now leads the series standings by 14 points, 246-232, with three rounds (six races) remaining in the series.
“It feels good after a month off to come back and feel good on the bike and feel comfortable,” Gerloff said. “I felt a lot better in that race – just everything was clicking real nice. We made some changes to our bike yesterday because I knew there were a few things to improve for consistency and it definitely helped today. It’s nice to win again, to get the double, I haven’t done that all year and I’ve been wanting that. It’s a good track for me and we have a couple of tracks coming up that are good for me too so we’re going to go there (Pittsburgh) and try my best to get some more wins."
M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Valentin Debise finished third, matching his effort from Saturday. Team H35 Honda’s Benny Solis again had a lonely ride to fourth.
Get 3rd today in sonoma. Happy to be back abble to play for the win again. Can't wait for tomorrow race ✊ A post shared by valentin debise (@valentin_debise) on Aug 12, 2017 at 10:09pm PDT
The battle for fifth overall was fought out until the very end with Team MG55’s Michael Gilbert getting the spot and victory in the Superstock 600 race, Presented by Riderz Law. The win was Gilbert’s third of the year and it allowed him to gain some points on championship leader Jason Aguilar. Aguilar ended up fifth in the Superstock 600 class on Sunday at Sonoma and he leads the standings by 14 points, 191-177.
Andrew Lee Racing/Tri-County Power Sports’ Andrew Lee and Palmetto Motorsports Team New Zealand’s Shane Richardson finished sixth and seventh overall and second and third in Superstock 600, respectively.
First Podium!!!! So happy with how today went. Position 2! - - PC: @ampmediahouse - - #roadracing #motoamerica #yamaha #r6 #speed #fast #sonoma A post shared by Andrew Lee (@andrewlee_100) on Aug 13, 2017 at 6:46pm PDT