We take a look at MotoAmerica with this gallery

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RacerViews’ Jim Fonseca was at the Laguna Seca Raceway and caught the MotoAmerica action. Here is our first gallery for the Superbike class.

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Monster Energy/Graves Motorsports Yamaha’s Josh Hayes and Cameron Beaubier left Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Sunday night all even in the 2015 MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North America Superbike Championship, the pair having taken a win apiece in the two races on a day marred by tragedy.

 

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Hayes won the first of the two races on Sunday morning, a race declared wet but run in mostly dry conditions with both Hayes and his junior teammate, Beaubier, making the right choice in running slick tires on their YZF-R1s. Hayes had almost 19 seconds in hand with Beaubier finishing second, well clear of third-placed Roger Hayden on a Yoshimura Suzuki. Hayden’s teammate, Jake Lewis, was fourth.

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Race two went to Beaubier with a three-way battle between the two Yamaha men and Hayden going to the very end. At the finish line, Beaubier beat Hayden by just 0.084 of a second with Hayes a shadow third, just 0.398 of a second behind. Fourth overall and first in the Superstock 1000 class went to Roadrace Factory’s Jake Gagne over HSBK Aprilia’s Sheridan Morais. Fourth in Superbike and eighth overall went to Lewis on the second GSX-R1000.

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Race two (the final race of the day after two World Superbike races, the first MotoAmerica Superbike race, and MotoAmerica Supersport) was marred by a chain-reaction, multi-bike incident on the first lap that resulted in the deaths of Spanish racers Bernat Martinez, 35, and Dani Rivas, 27. The incident occurred seconds after the start and the red flag came out immediately. The race was later restarted and ran for the scheduled 18 laps. For more information on the incident, click here.

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Gagne continues to lead the Superstock 1000 point standings over TOBC Racing’s Taylor Knapp, but the gap is now 20, 244-224. Knapp finished the day with a pair of thirds with Gagne sixth in race one and victorious in race two. Race one was won by Brit Mark Heckles, the first of the season for the Yamaha-mounted series rookie, who is a solid third in the standings. Morais was second in race two after struggling with a poor tire choice in race one.

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“Yeah, it was a hard day—a long day,” Hayes said at the end of race two. “There were such different halves of the day. This morning, experience really paid off. I think if I’d been lucky enough for that first (race two) start to go that would have worked more in my favor than the second start. I felt like I had gotten up to speed pretty quick. I was ready to go and just doing a race start kind of gets everybody up to speed.

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“I think these guys were a little better prepared on the second go around. But I rode the best race I could. I got to the front. I was going to fight for that position as long as I could. As soon as Roger (Hayden) came by, I wanted to go right back at him. I just didn’t have the tools that I needed to go after him, so as the race was wearing on, I knew Cam (Beaubier) was right behind me. I didn’t know really where I was doing good against him and where I wasn’t or what was going on. But when he finally made the move again, I wanted to go right back at him but I didn’t have what I needed to do it.

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Photos by Jim Fonseca July 2015

Words by MotoAmerica PR

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