AMA Superstock - Spies takes 5th consecutive SuperStock win

AMA SuperStock: Spies wins 5th in a row

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Ben Spies extended his run of AMA Superstock dominance on Sunday at Virginia International Raceway as the Yoshimura Suzuki ace scored yet another wire-to-wire victory in the class. Spies has taken six races in seven tries this season, including the last five in succession.

The Texan opened the race with a 0.591-second lead following the first lap and stretched it out to 1.386 seconds by lap two and 2.470 by lap three. Meanwhile, Team M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Geoff May, Jordan Suzuki’s Aaron Yates, and Yamaha USA’s Ben Bostrom disputed second.

Yates made his way into the runner-up spot as May ran off the track (and then later made his way into the pits) and Bostrom faded back into a battle with Yates’ teammate, Jake Holden.

Yates managed to make a race of it for a time as the hard-charging Georgian clawed back up towards Spies, drawing to within 1.075 seconds of the lead by lap 12 of 17. His challenge wouldn’t get much further than that, however, as Yates ran off track briefly, losing much of the time he had made up.

Spies and Yates settled into their positions at that point with the title leader opening his advantage to just over three seconds at the checkered flag.

Afterwards, Spies said, “I got off the line and looked over and saw Aaron right next to Ben and knew that he had consistently the best pace of everybody. I tried to put the first couple laps together and got a gap and then just kind of took it easy on the tire, stuff like that. Then the gap started coming down because I was really trying to save the tire and cruising around. I had to basically go all out the whole race. We got some breaks in some lapped traffic and in the middle part of the race when they started closing the gap, then we got back in the ‘25s and started going pretty good. The bike was really good the Dunlop tires were awesome and got another win today.”

Spies now leads the Superstock championship by 51 points over Bostrom, meaning he only needs to finish seventh of better in two weeks time at Road Atlanta to lock up one of the two titles he set his sights at the beginning of the season.

Even so, Spies claims he has sufficient motivation to continue pushing for race wins. “Well I just bought a car, so I need to win, I guess to pay that off,” he explained with a sly grin.”

Yates was joined on the podium by his Jordan Suzuki teammate, Jake Holden, who recovered from a poor start to work his way by several riders on his way to the box. After taking care of MPT Racing teammates Danny Eslick and Blake Young and then May, Holden moved into third with an inside braking maneuver on Bostrom in Turn 1.

Once through, Holden moved clear in third and pulled a bit of padding before crossing the stripe ahead of Bostrom.

Young sat in teammate Eslick’s shadow throughout the race, setting him up for one last-lap pass. The Wisconsin native snuck by the Oklahoman at the flag, edging him by a scant 0.07 seconds for the final spot in the top five.

Team Roadracingworld.com Suzuki’s Chris Ulrich picked up seventh with KWS sub Ben Thompson in eighth. HALOF racing’s Scott Jensen and Red Devil Roadracingworld.com’s Gary Mason completed the top ten.