Beaubier wins a wild one at Road America

ELKHART LAKE – Cameron Beaubier escaped a crash in the secondlast corner and then drafted past Josh Herrin at the line Saturday in the first round of a Superbike doubleheader in the MotoAmerica Dunlop Championship at Road America.

“That’s the wildest Superbike race I’ve been in,” said Beaubier, the 2015 and ‘16 champion, who scored his first victory of the season.

“I had the best seat in the house watching Josh and Toni (Elias) pass each other each corner. I knew as the laps were winding down, I was going to have to do the same thing, get aggressive.”

Beaubier dived under Elias into Canada Corner, a tricky right-hander, and Herrin shot past both as Elias went down and slid across the track. Herrin protected his line out of the final turn, but as he and Beaubier headed up the hill to the start/finish line, Beaubier dipped his Yamaha out of Herrin’s wake and powered past by 0.002 of a second, about 6 inches.

“It got pretty crazy on that last lap,” Beaubier said. “I didn’t know Toni went down until I came around on the cool-down lap and saw his bike there.”

Elias, who had won five of six races coming into Road America, ended up 14th. Garrett Gerloff, Beaubier’s rookie teammate, finished third.

Supersport: Valentin Debise won in his first race back since suffering two fractured vertebrae in a crash in the Daytona 200 in March. The French Suzuki rider escaped from a battle with JD Beach in the 11-lap race and ran his fastest lap on his way to the checkers for a 0.337-second victory.

Junior Cup: Canadian KTM rider Alex Dumas pulled away from Ashton Yates for a victory of 8.250 seconds in the seven-lap race.

Twins Cup: Jason Madana, riding a Yamaha, won the eight-lap race that finished the day’s racing.