Following his fourth-place finish in Saturday’s Superbike race one at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz returned to the podium in Sunday’s race two. For Mathew, it was his sixth podium finish of the season, and he maintained second in the championship point standings.

After making a couple of changes to the bike’s setup overnight and testing the new settings in the Sunday morning warmup session, Mathew got off to a good start in the afternoon’s race. In the opening laps, he challenged Jake Gagne and Loris Baz for the lead in a dramatic skirmish that occurred while the three riders were going through Laguna Seca’s iconic Corkscrew. Ultimately, Mathew settled into third and tenaciously hung onto his podium position all the way to the checkered flag.

Reflecting on his weekend, Mathew said, “Yesterday was good. Finishing just 4.8 seconds behind Jake (Gagne) is the closest we’ve been to him. Last night, we made some changes, and it definitely helped today. The past two rounds have been difficult, so we came here and just reset everything, worked our way up slowly Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and just got quicker and quicker. I think I hung onto Baz and Jake for the first 12 (of 20) laps or something like that. I didn’t think it would be possible running low to mid 24’s for most of the race. I got a nice surprise for myself there. Just a huge thank you to the Westby Racing team. These have been difficult times, but we persevered and managed to work our way back up to the podium here. We definitely have our work cut out for us to catch (Gagne and Baz). I feel like the bike is now going where I feel comfortable riding it. I’ve had to change how I go into corners, slightly. I feel like if we carry on working in the direction that we are now, we should be able to hopefully catch them soon.”

Westby Racing’s Junior Cup rider Jack Roach had a solid weekend aboard his Yamaha YZF-R3. He followed up his sixth-place finish in Saturday’s race one with another sixth-place finish in Sunday’s race two. In both races, Jack was in a group of riders who were competing for the podium. Also, on the strength of his two sixth-place results over the weekend, he moved up to 11th in the championship point standings.

Next up for Westby Racing is round seven of the MotoAmerica Championship, which will take place at Brainerd International Raceway in Brainerd, Minnesota, on July 30 through August 1.

MotoAmerica Superbike Standings

1. Jake Gagne – Yamaha – 225
2. Mathew Scholtz – Yamaha – 160
3. Josh Herrin – Yamaha – 145
   
   

MotoAmerica Junior Cup Standings

1. Tyler Scott – KTM – 207
2. Benjamin Gloddy – Kawasaki – 195
3. Cody Wyman – Kawasaki – 140
4. Jack Roach – Yamaha – 44