On a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Westby Racing teammates Mathew Scholtz and Jack Roach battled hard in their respective races.
Mathew started in fourth on the inside of the second row just behind the polesitter in Superbike race one, and despite losing a position in the opening laps of the red-flagged-and-restarted race, he fought back into fourth and had designs on overtaking fellow South African countryman and good friend Cameron Petersen. Unfortunately, the race had been shortened from 20 laps to 17 due to the restart, and Mathew ran out of laps before he could challenge Petersen for the podium.
Settling for fourth, Mathew maintained his second-place position in the championship point standings and will try to improve on his results with some proposed changes to the bike’s setup, which he and the team will test in Sunday morning’s warmup.
“I was quite happy with today’s race,” commented Mathew. “We came into Laguna with some ideas and ways to get ourselves back to the front, and I believe that we achieved that. Today, we finished the closest to first place that we have throughout most of the season so far. We were within five seconds of (race winner Jake) Gagne and just a second off the podium, so I feel like we are ‘right there.’ We have some ideas on where we can improve for tomorrow, and I’m very confident that we should be battling for the podium. Things have been difficult over the past two rounds for myself and the Westby team. We all rallied together here this weekend, put our heads down, and worked things out. I’m very happy to be back where we should be, and I’m looking forward to putting the Westby Yamaha R1 back up on the podium. A big thank you to the crew for all their great work.”
Sunday’s Superbike race two is at 2 p.m. PT and will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 1 (FS1), as well as streamed on MotoAmerica
In Saturday’s Junior Cup race, Jack started from the middle of the third row in eighth, and he moved up to seventh on lap three where he maintained his position until lap six. He dropped back to eighth again on lap seven, but on lap 10, he moved back up to seventh, then kept making forward progress and moved into sixth on lap 11, which he maintained for the remainder of the 13-lap race. More importantly, Jack was in a fierce battle for the podium with a group of several riders.
“It was a good race,” Jack said. “I was happy to be in the battle for the podium, and I also had the fourth-fastest lap time of the race. So, overall, I feel good about today and am looking forward to improving more tomorrow.”
Sunday’s Junior Cup race two is at 3 p.m. PT and will be streamed on MotoAmerica Live+, and then broadcast via tape-delay on FS2 this Tuesday, July 13, beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET.
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