Action in Atlanta

Motopod, proudly supported by Road Skin, a UK label specializing in protective outerwear for motorcyclists. Modern biker clothing that you can wear all day long and engineered to save your skin. For the road, for life, visit roadskin.co.uk. Hello and welcome to Motopod, the internet radio show all about motorcycle road racing. This is episode number 834 for the 23rd of April, 2026.

Action in Atlanta. Thank you to all the show's supporters. If you've been listening, please consider supporting the show. Visit the website at motopodcast.com for details. Any amount is greatly appreciated.

On this show, we will be covering the Moto America races at Road Atlanta from last weekend. I'm Jake Rohrer, new to the show this year, covering Moto America. And with me today is our longtime correspondent, Scott Bolton on the East Coast. Scott, good morning. How are you doing?

Doing great, Jake. Good to be back on the show. Yeah, it's great to have you. So for our newer listeners, maybe you can just give us a quick reminder of who you are and how you've been helping out the show over the last long time. Yeah, so I've been involved with the show probably since the mid-20 teens.

I can't remember the exact year or date, but yeah, our late great friend, Jim Race, gave me a shot at contributing some content, basically going to some races here on the East Coast and some cycle shows when they were having them back then and interviewing riders and team people in the industry, people related to the business. So that's kind of how it started. And yeah, since then, I've been fortunate to do, I don't know, I'd say it's probably pushing between 150 and 200 interviews since then. And with everybody from world champions to club racers to... It's been a labor of love, I guess you'd say.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been listening to the show since the 2000s and it's been great over the years to hear all the different interviews. And I understand you were at Road Atlanta this past weekend and you got four more interviews. So yeah, we're really excited to have those on the show. Maybe you can just give us a quick rundown of who you got to interview.

Yes, I was able to make it on Friday this year, which seems to work better getting interviews because it's not as... It's busy, but it's not like they're racing on Fridays, practicing qualifiers. So yeah, on Friday, I was able to talk first to Brendan Kettleson. And you know, you're being on the West Coast, got the Chuck Walla Valley Raceway. Yeah, that has the winner series.

And you know, I'm sure some of the listeners, especially my lucky on the West Coast, probably are familiar somewhat with Brendan because he's been just dominating the middleweight superbike class out there for the last few years. So yeah, I spoke with him first. He's got a shot at the racing supersport this year on the BRP R9. So I spoke to Brendan and then was fortunate to be able to speak with Darren Bender, our new ex-Moto GP padded transplant. That's great that you got that.

It's super exciting. I think the listeners are going to really enjoy that one. I listened to it already and thoroughly enjoyed it. So yeah, he was easy to talk to. I was really impressed with just being able to sit down and, you know, sit on the scene and have a good conversation with him.

So he was very accommodating, which I always appreciate. And then spoke last on Friday to Alex Dumas. And Alex is a Canadian that actually was in Moto America in some of the lower classes back in the 2017, 18, 19, I think in 20, he was in super stock for Team Hammer M4 X-Star Suzuki. And he got injured. And after that, I don't know if it was COVID or just the ride situation at the time.

Nothing was available, but he ended up racing, has been racing in Canada since then. And he's actually won the championship up there. But, you know, it's interesting. And he makes the comment in the interview that he was planning to race that series one more time this year, and then he was going to quit. Yeah, I listened to that one too.

And yeah, he said he was just getting tired of it. And coming down to Moto America kind of rejuvenated his passion in the sport. So that's yeah, it's great to hear. It's great that we can sort of have a little bit of an international series here. You know, we got a few people from South Africa and a few Aussies.

A Brazilian, I guess. Where is Richie Escalante from? Is he from Mexico? He's from Mexico City. Yeah.

So we got, you know, we can call ourselves an international series here at Moto America. I feel okay saying that. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure.

And so, yeah, that was Friday. And then Saturday, I was able to speak with Sonia Lloyd. Sonia is one of our up and coming female competitors. And Sonia races in the Twins Cup class, also on the Team Hammer M4X Star Suzuki team, on a GSX8R. And Sonia is an interesting story.

And you know, you'll hear it in the interview, but you know, she started kind of late, even though her family was into racing. But she kind of covers that. And she's worked her way up. Actually, she ran the World WCR last year, you know, the women's series that runs in conjunction with World Superbike. But she's back this year racing a full season.

And she had a pretty good performance at Daytona in the first race and had an unfortunate, pretty bad crash in the second race. And we talk a little bit about that. But, yeah, she's looking forward to the season. You know, I know Kayla Yakov, of course, and rightly so gets all the attention as far as female racers in our series right now. But, yeah, Sonia is showing some promise, following her footsteps.

You know, it's fantastic. I'm really, really excited about about. I don't know really when it sort of started, but it feels like it's in full swing now with the Royal Enfield field train race class. And then we just have women in kind of most of the classes now. It seems like there's at least at least a few.

I think it's I think it's great. Yeah, Superbike is the only one that hasn't raced or and I know I don't think Talent Cup this year, but they did last year with Ella Dreyer and she's in Twins Cup this year. Right. Right. So but yeah, it's definitely we got some good up and coming female talent in the queue for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really it's really exciting. It's really for the kids, you know, a little bit of inspiration for all of them. Yeah. All right.

Well, we will we will put those interviews in probably towards the end of the show. So you'll have to listen to us in order to get to the interviews. I guess you could just fast forward, of course. I have a few little notes on just general notes on Moto America this year and a few more specific things. But I don't know how you guys are watching the racing.

You know, you can watch it on YouTube, of course, and it's OK. I've I've been watching it on the actual Moto America video stream that you have to pay for. I'm happy to support the series and it's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's it's a little it's a little glitchy here and there.

It isn't the slickest, but, you know, it works on your Apple TV on the TV and it works on on your computer. And the advertising is reasonable. It's not they don't put any ads during the races or anything like that. It's not like the dark days of Speed Vision and Cable where they would throw ads in in the middle of a race. I'm pretty happy with it for the most part.

You can tell they're still polishing it. There's a there's some moments where things are a little glitchy. But for the most part, I think it's it's well worth the service. So, yeah, I'm happy that they're able to do this. And they have some, you know, they've got they've got Yamaha, Aprilia and Harley advertising.

So I think that's and then they have some other advertising that's kind of kind of hilarious. And just I don't know if you if you've noticed that, Scott, there's like a jewelry company that's sponsoring. Yeah, that's actually Tommy Duma. Oh, OK. And he's a former flat track racer.

Oh, OK. So there is a connection. I just and he does the championship rings. Yeah. AFT and Moto America.

Yeah. OK. Kind of kind of interesting. OK. Well, that's the connection there.

This is why we have these talks, because I just watching this like, why are they advertising this? It's just doesn't it doesn't I don't see the connection. So there is a connection. That makes more sense. This track Road Atlanta, I've never really watched the races closely enough to really pay attention to all the details of the track.

But man, that two, three chicane is is that is it just me or is that a little bit insane for this kind of racing? It just seems so they've had to make several modifications to Road Atlanta over the years as the bikes have, you know, gotten faster and whatever. The first modification was in the mid 90s when they reconfigured at the end of the back straight away through the kink at Turn 9, which is flat out. Right. And an awesome place to watch any race, but especially the Superbikes.

Before this reconfiguration at the bottom of the hill there, it was known as Gravity Cavity. And the track basically just went down into that basically a valley. And then and then there wasn't a Turn 10, you know, sharp. Right. Yes.

I know. Left, right. Yep. Yep. They never cracked the throttle till they started to break to go under the Suzuki Bridge.

And they weren't breaking much even there. And there were some pretty terrible crashes going under the bridge there because they were carrying so much speed through. So they did that reconfiguration in the mid 90s. And then it's great, too. That's that's like the most exciting.

Well, it opened up a really good passing spot. Of course, all the old school guys, a lot of them are like, oh, bring back Gravity Cavity. I guess in the 90s, maybe late 90s, seems like early 2000s, maybe Honda HRC was there testing and Miguel de Hamel coming off the last corner, had an incident and crashed coming onto the front straightaway. Well, at the time, it was a pretty fast right hander coming down the hill from under the bridge, leading onto the front. And there was very little runoff.

And he went into the to the tire wall there. And it was lucky not to be seriously hurt or worse. So after that incident, they reconfigured Turn 12 where they come down the hill and take the sharp right. That leads them onto the front straightaway. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty tight now.

And I still I was noticing like it's still a little bit unforgiving because you've got that curving on the outside. And then immediately on the outside of the curving, it's just gravel. So, yeah, man, if you go if you go over the curving, Josh Herron did that in the first SuperSport race. And he he didn't crash. He you know, but he kept it up, but he lost a lot of time.

And that's certainly it looks like it sucks you in a little bit. It looks a little unforgiving. But what do you think about what do you think about the two, three she came because I just I watched them go through there and it's like, this is insane. Yeah. So that was the last update.

And that's been within the last five or 10 years. I can't remember exactly when, but what it was, they would come up over the top of the hill at Turn three. And the way the track was configured there again, it would be kind of a right hand and then left hand. Well, when they took that left hand, they were looking right at the wall. OK, there was and they're going fast.

Exactly. Very little runoff room. So they put that basically a chicane in there. It's not like a classic chicane where you do like a 90 degree left and then a 90 degree right. It's more of just a little slalom.

And it's like one line and you're going curb to curb. And, you know, we'll talk about PJ's misfortune there later. But man, especially at the first lap or two of a race, there can be pretty serious chaos there. Yeah. When everybody's much bigger.

But yeah, that's a tricky spot. But yeah, but once again, done for the sake of safety, which, you know, we trade it. We'll trade a very high speed crash for a much lower speed crash, I guess. Exactly. I wanted to make it just a quick note.

It's really great to see Team Roberts in the Talent Cup and seeing those guys there, seeing Kenny and his son, Kenny Roberts Jr., they both seem to be attending at least some of the races. So that's really cool. And then also Ben Spees, like hanging out in the pits, talking to Kayla, talking to different people. That's it's just great to see some of our former greats sort of involved in the series. You know, I think it's really, really inspiring.

You know, Jacob, it's funny, I mentioned several people at the track. I said, man, if Swans was here. Oh, man. I said this would be like a U.S. World Champion reunion.

Yes. You had, of course, Roberts there. You had Spees with Ray Haldekati. Right. Freddie Spencer works with the build train.

I was going to mention that. Yep. Yep. He was there. Scott Russell was there as the grand marshal, former 500 GP rider and world super bike champion.

And Mr. Daytona is. Oh, yeah. And yeah. So if you would have had Swans maybe Lawson, a couple other guys there, it's really cool.

Yeah. To sit to see that kind of a racing royalty. Yeah. And they're and they're not just they're not just spectators. They are involved.

Right. They're they're participating. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Spees is like the team manager for Ray Haldekati. Kenny, like I say, that's the revival of Team Roberts. You got that got that classic K.R. sticker on the front of that bike.

It's unmistakable. Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit about their rider this year coming up. But absolutely formidable package. Oh, yeah.

No, they're they're going for it. Yeah, it's great to see. And I still am a little worried about yet more Ducati domination. It looks like it's it's possible this year, obviously, with Cameron Bovier getting on the V4R. Certainly a huge threat, but it didn't happen this weekend, maybe mostly due to misfortune.

So I don't know. I guess I just wanted to mention that. I don't know how you're I'm feeling a little just sort of like, man, Ducati's are just dominating all the motorcycle racing. Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that doesn't fully come to pass in Moto America. It's just a little it's a little much, you know, the red team is just killing everybody.

Going into the season, I was kind of had that same fear about Bovier. But after attending the races at Road Atlanta, I mean, he's still going to be tough. I really, you know, I really have no doubt about that. But I'll tell you, Maddie Schultz, he's oh, yeah. I think that guy's I talked I didn't get to interview him.

Hopefully I will at Barbara, but I talked to him a couple of times during the weekend. And I can tell you right now, that guy's got the bit between his teeth. He is he's hungry. He's done his time for sport and clean house there. Yeah.

And he he's going to be tough. And, you know, I don't know. We'll wait and see. But I I was so I hated for Cam, obviously his misfortune. They had to start at the back both races because I so wanted to see what, you know, how him and show race together.

Yeah. Well, we'll get to see it. We'll get to see it. But I agree Schultz is he is hungry and he's got something to prove. I think he's I think he feels a little hard done by being sort of demoted back to super sport for a couple of years.

So Schultz, Schultz, whatever your pronunciation. We, you know, yes, I I'm not. I'm not sure. I think it's Schultz, but I'm not sure. I think so.

But it looks you say it like you see it. Sometimes you miss the sea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, I think watching Cameron recover from, you know, 20th on the grid, I think that was a pretty good indication of his of his pace. He's just starting on that bike. Right. It's all new. So, oh, yeah.

See, so you mentioned the Royal Enfield earlier. And I noticed Freddie Spencer was commentating. So that was like, Whoa, Freddie's here. So that was really fun. He's he's good to listen to.

He's always got a lot of interesting observations. And we'll come back to the Royal Enfield. The last thing I wanted to mention, and we talked about this before we started recording, but there's and apparently this used to be very common. But there's a couple of riders running two classes. These are the only two that I know I could.

There could be more, but Hayden Gillum, number 69, is running the Superbike class on a Honda, and he's running the baggers class on an Indian. And we'll get to that later how they seem to be dominating now. And then Sam Drain, number 59, who I think he's got a bit of a following now. He seems to be pretty well known. He's always gets mentioned a lot in the races.

He's running both the Talent Cup and the Twins Cup. So, yeah. And, you know, his brother, of course, for Estenson and his brother races for Estenson, Tom Drain in AFT. OK, yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, he's yeah, he was he's he's showing a lot of promise. Yeah. Coming up through the ranks. Yeah. And I just I finally just made the connection between Jake Page and Bodie Page.

Just finally realized that Jake's the younger brother of Bodie. So that's cool to see. You know, yeah. And of course, all those guys are Australian. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Of course.

Yep. So talking about the international flair, that's another aspect of that. Yeah, it's great to see that they want to come over here and race. Yeah. It's just on that point, it was on about the multi class riders.

Like I say, you got Hayden, you've got Drain, Max Flinders, one of the privateers in Superbike races, Superbike and Baggers. OK, OK. He's another one. All right. I missed that.

And then you've got some guys that are running like Corey, like Jake Lewis, Corey West for Saddleman running the Hooligans and Baggers. Of course, all these classes, you know, the Superbike Cup, those two classes race every weekend, but some of the other classes, you know, will kind of switch around. So, you know, they may be absent from certain. Yeah. And Baggers and Super Hooligans are both examples of that, that they don't attend every every weekend.

Yeah, actually. Yeah, actually, Twins Cup and Super Hooligans and the Royal Enfield. So, yeah, it's every weekend you're going to see Superbikes, you know, which includes the Superbike Cup and Super Sport. But yeah, depending on the track. Yeah, you may see a mix of those other classes, all good classes.

Yeah. All right. I think we can get into some of the racing here. And I'm just going to mute myself while I well, I think we'll start Super Sport qualifying. The big story of the weekend or one of the big stories of the weekend was Kayla Yakov.

She just was so looks so smooth, just kept figuring out the track and being so measured about the whole thing and methodical. I just couldn't I can't say enough about like she was just cruising around. She did not look like she was pushing. She wasn't having any moments. And with four minutes left in the second session, she puts in a 28-0 and nobody else could touch it.

I mean, Ty Scott was close, but she definitively was on pole. And she just I just couldn't I couldn't believe how smooth she was and how she just didn't look like she was having any moments at all. She looked like she had another another second, you know, if she really, really wanted to push. So I don't know from where you were watching, Scott, what you were able to see. But I was impressed.

Yeah, we were at the on the outside of the track at the bottom of, you know, the hill there at the back end of the back straight turn, where they go into turn 10. Yeah. Very some people used to call it 10a and 10b. And then, of course, back up under up the hill under the bridge. But yeah, she we were watching from there.

And man, she had come through that turn 10 complex and just very smooth, very consistent, you know, very planted. You see quite a few bikes as they're powering up off 10, going up the hill towards the bridge, you know, stepping out a bit and get a little squirrely and man, she was she was just planted. And, you know, Kayla's continued to, you know, not only improve as a rider, but I think she's maturing also as far as her just her approach. And one thing I think having been species in her corner is is a big help to us. That's great.

Yeah. And also got hair, you know, Josh Herron on the team with her and right. And and PJ PJ is really Jacobson has really taken Kayla, you know, under his wings the last few years. They did a lot of offseason training. Yeah, I've been I've been reading that.

And I'll mention this again, because I found it just so heartwarming at Daytona after PJ crashed out towards the end of the race. Kayla stopped and picked him up and brought him back, you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was great to see. It was like, that's really cool.

I love seeing that in any series, but it was just kind of a neat thing. So moving on to Saturday and Super Sport, Saturday was pretty hot and sunny. I can't remember if it was if how different how different the conditions were compared to the qualifying, but it was definitely. It was. Yeah, it was.

It was pretty similar. Yeah. We were on the end of the a week or two stretch and we're in a kind of a major drought here in the southeast. And where we haven't had rain and any measurable rain and basically months. And so, yes, it's been and it's been unseasonably warm for this time of year.

But fortunately, we're not getting July and August humidity with the heat. So, yeah, it was in the upper 80s for highs Friday and Saturday. Sunny. Right. Yeah.

And then it changed a bit for Sunday when a front moved through. Yeah. A drop without rain, but it dropped. Yeah. It dropped the temperature about about 15 degrees on Sunday.

So we'll talk about that later. But that was interesting. Yeah. It looked like just some some strong cloud cover came in and really, really dropped the air temperature and the resulting track temperature without the sun for a supersport race on Saturday. On the first lap, Bender, who is in P5, passes four people for the lead coming down the hill into turn 10.

He passes Ty Scott, Blake Davis, Heron and Kayla. And it was like it was a crazy move. It didn't look like he was going to get it done. And somehow he just stormed in there so much faster than everybody else, but somehow got it stopped and hit the apex and was like, OK, here's the Moto2 guy. This is what we were expecting.

Yeah. You know, and that back straight at Road Atlanta, they they they'll fan out as they're approaching the turn nine kink and but as they start to go down the hill towards 10 and sometimes they'll fan out three or four wide. So, yeah, he obviously called a two or three back, you know, side by side draft. And yeah, it was it was questionable whether he was going to make the make the corner. It was scary.

He was in his mind. He was probably like, well, this is going to turn out really good or really bad. But he he did it. Yeah, it was exciting. But yeah, that was pretty wild.

Yeah, that was he was putting his stamp on on that race. And yeah, he I'm sure he was questioning it as as much as we were watching. And that so so then immediately after that, after 10, 11, Heron blows the final corner, turn 12 and goes over the curb and into that gravel I was talking about earlier. Somehow he kept it up. He kind of stood it up.

He knew he was going off. He stood it up most of the way before he completely crossed the curb because he knew and he got into the gravel and had big wobble. But he kept it up and he lost a bunch of positions. But he did. He did rejoin.

Now, Jacob, you were watching the races. Of course, I was there viewing live. But from where I'm at, I can't see turn 12. Right. I do have a jumbotron and I was listening on the, you know, the headset to the broadcast.

But some of the some of the friends that were with me were under the impression that that Heron had maybe got Bob going under the bridge by Bender and then going into 12 Bender, stuffed it up under him. And there was a little bit of contact. Was that did you see that? I mean, I think they were close. Yeah.

But I think Heron. So Heron talked about it. Afterwards, and he said they had made some changes to the bike after qualifying. And he said it just he said he essentially the braking was less stable. And he he didn't have the control.

I think he probably the rear wheel was in the air or wasn't wasn't touching. And he just he couldn't get it. It just didn't stop the way he was expecting. And he ran wide. But yeah, I mean, that was my impression.

Maybe I maybe I missed. They were definitely close. But I think Heron did make a mistake. And he said as much afterwards, he didn't he didn't mention anything about it. Josh, if Bender would have nudged him off the track, he would let us know.

Yeah, that's not been the case. Yeah. Yeah. So by lap six, Josh Hayes, you know, our old our old reliable friend, Josh Hayes, still racing. He's up to P four by lap six.

And he sets then he sets the fastest lap and gets into P three for for potential podium finish in a turn 10 pass. So that's pretty exciting to see Josh regaining some of his pace. I've interviewed Josh several times in the past. Great guy. Great interview.

Yeah. I refer to him now when I see him is the ageless wonder. And he gets a kick out of that. But I did I did see an interview with him after that race. And the person interviewed him said, and it's great to see you back out there with race winning pace again.

And Josh said, well, I wouldn't really say race winning pace. He said, I had competitive pace. Yeah. He said, Heron wasn't up there with us. If he would have been, I don't know that he's got race winning pace.

Yeah. Interesting that he pointed that out after the first race. Yeah. He's pretty humble. Josh Hayes is.

Yeah. Yeah. Down to earth for sure. Yeah. So by lap 10, Heron has recovered and he's he's up to P seven.

And then he sets the fastest lap of the race of a 28 to. So five laps later, Hayes now finds his way into P two. And he's looks like he's going for the win at this point. He's pushing really hard. And then as luck would have it, he pushes a little too hard coming into turn one.

It looks it looked like he entered just a little wide and had to just lean it over a little more. And he tucks the front and goes off the outside of the track. And he tumbled and I was just cringing like, oh, man, he's, you know, the the nice, easy low slides where you just slide and, you know, yeah, you don't hit anything, you don't tumble. Those crashes are, you know, you usually feel a little banged up, but it's not too bad. But he tumbled and flipped and I was just cringing.

I mean, Josh is I don't he's 50 something. He's it's in his 50s. I think he's 51. Yeah, like he's he I mean, in that turn one, it rode Atlanta. That's a fast crash.

Oh, yeah. Because even though the front straight away isn't just super long, you know, the super sport, you know, the super bike, especially, but even the super sports man, you're you've built up ahead of steam. And that turn one starting to go up the hill towards two is not a slow corner. You're not breaking just a whole lot to go through there. So, yeah, you go down.

You see some pretty spectacular get offs there at turn one at Atlanta, for sure. Yeah, no, it was it's definitely fast there. You do not really want to go off. But he by lap 16, Blake Davis is chasing Kayla for P3. Kayla hits a little bit of lap traffic and loses a little bit of time.

And Blake is able to completely close the gap on Kayla. And he makes a really strong pass attempt in turn one. But I was really pleased to see Kayla defending super hard and not giving up the position. So it was cool to see her not just in qualifying, but actually in the race and really not not yielding to the competition. But by by turn six, Blake did finally get by.

And then Tyler Scott up at the front was chasing Binder really hard. He couldn't make anything stick. So the race finished with Darren winning the race. With Ty Scott very close behind. Blake Davis finishing out the podium and then Kayla Yakov getting fourth place with Josh Herron behind her.

Aidan Snead in sixth, Dominic Doyle seventh, Maximiliano Gerardo in eighth. Brendan Kettleson, who we talked about earlier, got ninth. And Alexander Enriquez finishing out the top ten. I was a pretty good race. I was happy to have to see, you know, it wasn't nice to see Hayes crash, but it looked like he actually survived that one without any any major injuries.

So, yeah, we lost Hayes and we also lost Alessandro DiMario. Yes, yes. Up and coming young guys that's on a Ray Hall Ducati on the roller die. Oh, yeah, yeah. Ducati, yeah, I think that kids.

No, he's he's worth worthy of mention. I apologize for him. No, but yeah, definitely a good race. You know, point three, seven, eight between Bender and Scott for the win. And then about the same margin between Davis and and Kayla.

Yeah, Kayla was only two, two tenths behind. Yeah, so it's right there. So for the win and for the final podium spot, two really good battles. Yeah, yeah, it was great to see. So we'll move on to race two on Sunday.

So as we mentioned earlier, the weather changed on Sunday. Luckily, it didn't rain, but it got a lot cooler. And and windier. Oh, and windier. Yeah, that's that's important.

It's hard to see that on the TV. But yeah, and it it it was interesting. And the more after the morning warm up, apparently some of the riders and different classes were stating that with those cooler conditions that the track did become a lot grippier. Yep. Yep.

It looked like the track was going to come into a sort of an ideal grip window. And I was expecting to see the lap times drop. And they definitely dropped by by quite a bit by like half a second. So the race started out. Kayla had a better start than she did in the first race.

And she she held on to P3 for several laps. And Heron kept it together. I think he may. I don't remember if he said if he changed the bike back to the qualifying setup or not, but he kept it together. So anyway, by lap six, Heron passes Kayla for P3.

Binder puts a really hard move on Kayla coming into turn 10. This was this was worth talking about. She he came down in there and stuffed it up the inside and pushed Kayla wide. But man, she gave him just enough room, but no more. She didn't let herself get pushed all the way out to the outside.

So I was I was really to have her seeing her defend again. Like it's it's one thing. It's one thing to be able to go around the track and put in a good qualifying time. It's another to actually race with with some of these much more seasoned dudes. You know, and she just she's not intimidated.

She's she's out there. It's good for her learning curve. I mean, you know, dealing with moves like that and then eventually getting to the point where she's put moves like that on some of those guys in return. You know, that's that's just going to make her a better, tougher racer. So, yeah, 100 percent.

They're they're not taking it easy on her. I know. No, no, no. She don't want them to. No, she don't.

She don't want to. She's not even excited about people acknowledging that she's a woman out there. She's like, I'm I'm just another racer out here. Yeah, no, it's true. And we do we do need to to it's hard to see it like that right now when it's this is she's making a splash.

Oh, no, no, it's it's it's worth mentioning by all means. But she's I've heard her say on several occasions that, you know, I don't think that's some it's funny. She's even talked about the women's series. And those are good. You know, those are good.

Good stepping stone for the for female riders. But she's like, you know, no, I want to be out there with the best of the best. Yeah, of course. Whatever series I'm in, you know, and so, yeah, it's interesting. But her her mindset on that.

Yeah, no, she's the real deal for sure. So by lap 13, while chasing down Heron, who has found his way to the front, Bender sets a new a new lap record of a twenty seven six, two tenths under the twenty seven eight that Garrett Gurloff set way back in 2017, I believe on an R6. So that was cool. And then a few laps later, after some really good battles with Heron, Binder had a had a strange bike issue on the back straight, and he lost about six tenths of a second. Nobody really understood what had happened.

But later he reported that he bumped the kill switch and was like, oh, man, that's apparently there's a switch and it's right in this between the you know, the clip ons, you know, the steering head. Oh, yeah. Apparently, he when he started to tuck in, he he hit it with the bottom of his chin guard on his helmet. Oh, I bet they're going to I bet they're going to make an adjustment after that incident. But but it was going to be interesting.

I really thought that and it's unusual for Heron. Usually if Heron can pass somebody, he'll pass them as soon as he can and try to check out. But he was he could tell he was kind of playing the game. And he was it's like he was going to wait till the last. I was thinking maybe the last lap or two and try to draft pass Binder down the back straight into 10 and then try to bust out a qualifying lap and take the, you know, take the win in the last lap or two.

We will never know because that is, you know, because of Binder's misfortune. But yeah, I mean, he did kind of do that in a way. I mean, Binder gave him gave him a little bit of time, but then he did. He throw down a 27 five. Oh, yeah.

On the next lap, which again, a new record. Yeah. Once he got by him, it was just a matter of him managing the lead, which he was seemed to be quite easily able to do. Yep. Yeah.

So by the last lap, Kayla finds herself just a couple of tenths behind Ty Scott and P3. But she she couldn't close the gap, unfortunately. She was really close, but just couldn't find her way by. And a few positions back, Blake Davis and Aidan Snead had a great battle for P5 with Davis prevailing. So the final positions were Josh Herron taking the win.

Darren Binder, one and a half seconds behind him. Ty Scott in third, Kayla in fourth, right behind Ty. And then Blake Blake Davis in fifth, Aidan Snead in sixth, Torrin Collins seventh, Ryder Davis eighth, Dominic Doyle in ninth, and Josh Hayes rounding out the top 10. He definitely did not have the same pace on Sunday as he did on Saturday. I don't know if anybody if you've heard any interviews with him, but he certainly didn't look as.

Yeah. Yeah, I haven't. I don't know if it was if maybe he was a little beat up, probably from that crash on Saturday, maybe in combination with the different conditions, maybe the bike wasn't feeling as good. He made an interesting comment, though. I did mention that where I heard the interview with him after race one.

And in that interview, he did mention, you know, the R9 had to switch to the stock swing arm this year. Yeah. Yeah. And he said for him, that was a godsend. He said last year he never felt like he could, you know, the bike never felt planted and he never could really get comfortable.

And he said now, since they made that change, I said, as soon as I tested it during the off season, he is like, wow. You know, this for me anyway, this makes all the difference. Yeah. The stock swing arm apparently is 40 millimeters shorter than that tracer swing arm that they were running. I think Goltz was ran the bike with the longer swing arm for both both seasons, I think 24 and 25.

Yeah. Yeah. They didn't make that change till after the end of last year. So I mean, it was it was a rules change, right? They basically said it was.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a lot and a lot of the teams were complaining about it. That, you know, not they didn't see it as a yeah. A legitimate issue to have to change.

But right. But yeah, it was that's why I thought it interested that Hayes said for him. It actually improved the situation. Yeah. I mean, it would it would certainly make the bike turn faster to have that shorter swing arm.

But, you know, now, as far as Blake, as far as Blake Davis or, you know, you know, some of the other Yamaha riders, hey, you know, I don't know how they've up here. So leaving Road Atlanta, you've got Heron leading with 61 point. Darren Bender, second with 58, Tye Scott, third with 56, Kayla Yacov, fourth with 42 and Blake Davis and fifth. And we'll stop there. That's your top five coming out of Road Atlanta headed to Barbara next month.

All right. Yeah. Thank you for for thank you for putting that in. OK, so Superbike qualifying right out of the gates. PJ Jacobson has this horrible, ugly crash, really, really awkward, horrible crash where the bike just kind of, you know, you're going through that right, left, right really fast and curb to curb.

And he just sort of upset the bike a little bit, pushed on it a little too hard. And it came unglued and it got really unstable and pitched him off. And it just got into a big tank, slapper, big tank, slapper. And as soon as he hit the ground, the video, they replayed the video, honestly, a couple of times too many, but they replayed it several times. And you could see that he got knocked out.

You could see that he went limp and was just sliding and his head was just on the on the ground. Yeah, you could see when when he came off the bike and his head hit the pavement. That was a very hard hit. Yeah. Yeah.

It was I did. I did see an interview with PJ after the race on Sunday because he was back at the track. And he said that basically, as he went through that turn to three, four chicane area, that as he was coming through there, he got on the curb and it caused his front wheel to come off the pavement just just enough. And when it set back down, that's what upset him. Yeah.

What upset the the bike and got him in trouble. Yeah. I noticed like Josh, Josh Herron, the way he goes through there, he tends to for the for the last it's like right, left, right. Or is it left, right? Anyway, for the for the last little wiggle of that series in the chicane, he he's in a tuck.

And he's he's wheeling a little bit to to to me. He's basically turning the bike on the rear wheel. And I think PJ was doing something similar, but just overdid it. But I felt bad for him. You know, he's he this season is not it's not starting out so well for him.

He's having a lot of bad luck right right at the beginning. Really? Yeah. I mean, they got the bike late. Just, you know, a few weeks prior, got one test on it at Talladega Grand Prix.

It's a small track, not too far from Barbara. Not long after PJ's crash right at the beginning of qualifying, Bobie has a big fast crash coming down the hill after the chicane into the turn four or five S's, which is a pretty there was a lot of crashes there over the weekend. And a lot of the bikes went into the air fence and then went up and landed on the tire wall behind the air fence. Kind of a scary spot. Fortunately, he walked away from that.

Yeah, he was OK. He was limping a little bit. I didn't actually wasn't able to see any videos of the actual crash. I think they didn't have a camera on him when he crashed, but they, you know, they once they saw he had crashed, they started filming. So never actually got to see the crash.

But yeah, so he you know, this is a huge setback to crash or the beginning of qualifying and not be able to set a time. Yeah. And in years past, it might not have been such a big deal, but they changed the qualifying format for Superbike this year, where basically the first session is free practice session on Friday. The second session on Friday is a time practice session that sets the top 22 to run in the qualifying session the next day. So there's Saturday morning.

They do have a free practice to but those those times don't count towards quality. So it's basically gone to like a world Superbike qualifying format where you really only have one qualifying attempt. And with that being the case, of course, unfortunately, PJ was out due to injury for the weekend. But yeah, for Bobie, that put him at the back of the pack for both starting both races. Well, it put him at the at the back of the the 20, right?

It didn't put him at the very, very back. It put him 22nd because it was 22nd. OK, it would have depending on how there might have been some other riders. I've got the results here. Like you were saying, the time practice put him into the qualifying session.

So he he was gridded at the back of that, whatever that group was. Twenty first was OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that continued to be a problem later in the weekend, but we'll get to that. So Scoltz looked really great on the R1, like we were saying before, after coming back from SuperSport the last couple of years, he just looked so solid and put in a time that no one else could could match.

I mean, Bobby Fong was right. But I guess Bobby Fong was only less than a tenth behind him. So they're they're really close. They're really close. But Bobby's, you know, continuing, you know, he's not coming back to Superbike.

He's been in Superbike. And I think it's worth saying, you know, Scoltz is on the track. Strak apparently is basically like a satellite team for ATT&CK. And apparently he is getting the full package, just like what ATT&CK is. Oh, good.

I'm glad that he is. He deserves it, which is the first time is in his career, because when he was with Westby running Superbike, they never had and what you won some races on and, you know, that was running the SuperStock bike and winning some Superbike races, but he didn't have the complete package like the ATT&CK machine. Right. So he's got that now. So we kind of saw proof of that as the weekend went on.

Yeah. So we were talking about Scoltz being on essentially the same bike as Bobby Fong, despite the different graphics. So that's that's great. They should they should be very evenly matched as far as machinery. So it ended up with Scoltz taking pole Bobby Fong right behind him.

Sean Dylan Kelly on the BMW right behind Bobby. Really close, actually, to see those top three. That's great to see. The times are really close. And then Cam Peterson in fifth, about a half a second back.

JD Beach coming back to Superbike, putting a pretty good time in fifth. A little shot out to JD. He's he's from he's from the Northwest, pretty close to Seattle. Kind of famous around here. He had had some really good flat track career.

So a little shot out to him. And then Richie Escalante in sixth on the Suzuki. Definitely, definitely a little off the pace, about a second and a half off pole. Ben Smith on the other factory Ducati right behind him. Hayden Gillum in eighth on the Honda.

Jason Uribe on another on the Orange Cat BMW in ninth. And then Brandon Posh finishing out the top ten on a Suzuki for the M4 X-Star. So we'll move on to race one on Saturday. It was hot just like Friday. Pretty similar conditions.

Scoltz from pole just disappears, gaps the field immediately. It was like, wow, there was just no nobody else was close to him out of the gates. Made a statement. Really made a statement. I was like, how did he do that with a full tank of fuel?

And just he's just he's hungry and clearly feeling good on that R1. And then Bobie, starting from 21st, gets all the way up to P11 on the first lap. I was like, OK, he's going for it. He's feeling pretty good. But by lap five, Cameron has some kind of a bike issue and makes his way back to the pits and later reported that he had oil on, I believe, his right boot.

And when that when that happens, suddenly your foot peg gets a lot less grippy than it was and you really notice it. And it's a it's a telltale of something something going south of the engine. So he what looked like some more bad luck for Cameron later turned. He got a break on that. Finally, we'll get to that.

So by lap six, Scoltz is a second and a half ahead of Bobby Fong, who then crashes in turn one, another fast crash. And then shortly after that, Manuel Segura on the triple to Honda crash going up the hill. Now, I don't remember which hill it was, but he was going up a hill. I don't know if it was turn one or if it was like on the backside, but he crashed going up the hill and the bike came to rest in the middle of the track. Did not go off.

So that caused a red flag, which became a really big break for for Bobie. A little bit of luck, finally, for Bobie with this weekend, starting with a bunch of setbacks on the restart. Bobby Fong was not allowed to start despite the team's attempts. They were trying to get his bike fixed and they were trying to make a case that should be allowed to restart. But per the rules, he I guess he had sort of like when he crashed, he was really upset and he walked away from the bike.

And apparently the way the rules are written, you have to sort of be what they they call participating. And participating can be like getting your bike stood back up and trying to rejoin the race that counts as participating. But if you walk away from the bike, you sort of get into this gray area where the rules where they don't they sort of say, oh, you've given up. You're not participating anymore. So I think that technicality is why he wasn't able to restart, which was that was a tough break.

I think he he won't forget that rule going forward, I guess. Yeah, I've seen that happen in some of the lower classes. Had a incident in a red flag and the rider just out of frustration or maybe being a bit addled or confused. Like I say, basically don't attempt to remount or restart the bike and just walks off. And then like I say, that's basically retiring themselves from the race at that point, even even when they realize, oh, I could, you know, maybe get this going and you go back to the bike.

But I think it's kind of for a maybe for safety reasons that they, you know, if the rider is a concussed a bit or whatever and they don't want them. Well, that that makes sense. But on the other side of it, it's like if you crash in an impact zone, you got to get the hell out of there. You do not want to hang out near the bike. So it's a little strange to me.

Like, are they are they trying to encourage riders to stay with the bike even in an impact zone and try to rejoin? Like that seems unsafe as well. So I'm a little confused about the intent behind this rule. It seems it seems like you should be able to escape the impact area. And then maybe after everyone's gone by, then maybe you can go back to the bike and pick it up.

I don't know. But we won't we won't harp on this too much. But it is a little strange. And I think it's mainly like, say, in a red flag situation. So that, you know.

Oh, I see. Right. So I guess if since he didn't cause the red flag, but, you know, as a rider, you don't you don't necessarily aren't fully aware of what's going on. So anyway, it was a tough it was a it was a little bit of a tough break because he certainly could have have restarted. He was able to the bike was wasn't too banged up and he was OK.

Yeah, I can see it from both sides. Yeah. So on the restart, Schultz again just blitzes the field from pole and just gaps everybody. By lab to Bobie, a finds his way up to P10, which is impressive. And then by lap three, he's he's in P7.

So Bobie is on the move. He's he's recovering, getting back through the field from his his bad qualifying by lap for Schultz has a three and a half second lead over JD, who's in who's in P2. That was good to see. The next lap, Bobie is up to P5. And by lap eight, Bobie came down the turn 10 hill really, really fast.

But he missed the apex and went off the outside. And apparently they showed this. Apparently the the V4 seems to have at least the way he's got it set up. It seems to be unstable at speed. He was having a lot of scary head shakes on the back straight, you know, in the draft, out of the draft.

It seemed like steer, you know, some something's a little unstable. And apparently when he missed the apex of turn 10 and went off the track, he he didn't have any front brakes coming down the hill. So apparently he had one of those head shakes where it it knocks the front brake pads back away from the rotor just a little bit. And when you pull that front brake lever the first time, there's nothing there. Yep.

And just those tiny fractions of a second make all the difference. But he was able to recover. He went off the outside, but then he rejoined in turn 11 behind JD. On lap 10, Bobie gets by Cam Peterson in turn six for for the final podium position. So that was pretty impressive.

You know, he's he's still getting used to this bike and he had a bad qualifying, but he's still able to get through the field and and get a podium. So I think that bodes really well for Cameron's season. Yeah, it's good damage control. Absolutely. Yeah.

He recovered really well. So Scoltz again won both races pretty definitively. Sean Dillon Kelly, we haven't really talked too much about him. He he got second on the Orange Cat BMW and he looks like he's going to have a pretty good season. He was very confident in the interviews.

He considers himself a real real title contender this year. So I'll give that to him. We'll see how the season goes. But he definitely he's definitely doing well. Yeah, I think I think SDK is going to going to be up there battling with Bobie and Scoltz and Fong and, you know, the top four or five guys on a regular basis.

Course, first weekend on that team and back on the BMW after hiatus of being on the Suzuki last year. So, yeah, I think SDK is going to be a factor. Yeah, I hope so. So, yeah, Cameron Peterson gets fourth. Jason Uribe on the other Orange Cat BMW came in fifth.

Another good ride from him. Yes, Richie Escalante in sixth. He's he's definitely maybe he's just taken his time. It seems like he's he's not really quite up to where he maybe should be. But but I think he's I think the Suzuki.

Yeah, it is. Even though they they I know this year's the new bike has had some upgrades from the previous year, but whether those have made it to the race team yet, I don't know. Unfortunately, they all Suzuki always seems to be lagging behind and for some reason in whatever cat in whatever. Yeah, they certainly seem like they they got a little complacent over the last decade or so. You know, they were until they made these upgrades.

And I can't remember. It seems like there were some upgrade to the engine and maybe a couple of other things. But like I say, I don't know if that has actually made it to the race back and if it has, if it's still not enough to get them on par with it, because I think I mean, Posh is a he's a very talented writer. Escalante, I think, you know, he's he's got a lot of talent. So, oh, yeah, yeah, Richie's been in Superbike for Team Hammer for the last three years, at least.

So Brandon Posh, Richie's teammate, comes in in seventh, pretty close behind. And then Andrew Lee in eighth, Max Flinders, ninth and Emmanuel Aguilar rounds out the top ten. Just a quick note, Andrew Lee was the top finishing back in the Superbike Cup. In the Superbike Cup, right. So we'll get we'll give him some credit for getting a getting a good, solid eighth position.

That's pretty impressive on the Honda. And another note is that JD JD Beach was a DNF. He had some issues and then I had that on my notes and I neglected to mention it. Yeah, he had some kind of a problem with the bike. And I never found out what happened there.

I didn't know. But he was running a really strong race. So, yeah, that's that's unfortunate. But all right. So moving on to race two for Sunday, the track.

Apparently the air was 64 and the track was 84 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really right in the sweet spot. So I think everyone was pretty excited for a little bit denser air and a really good track condition. Yeah, with the previous two days, the track being over 100 degrees. Yeah, it was kind of getting a little a little too hot, a little above the ideal window. So Scoltz again just blitzes the field, gets the whole shot from pole and gets out front by lap five.

Bobie gets himself up to P10. But Bobby Fong is all over Scoltz. He closes the gap after a few laps. And he is on Scoltz's tail. One thing I noticed was, and he did this several times, Fong kept getting sort of up parallel with Scoltz coming down the hill and to turn 10 after the back straight.

But he kept finding himself on the outside and really could not. There's no I mean, you have to be well ahead of your competitor if you want to pass on the outside coming down that hill into 10. I think he did this about three times where he just he got past him. And then he was sort of like showing him a wheel. But on the outside, there was nothing he could do.

It's like, hey, I'm here. You know, it's interesting because Heron was doing the same thing to Bender in the Super Sport race. I wonder if it's something to do with the back straight when you're approaching someone, if for some reason, maybe the camera of the track or something draws you to the outside instead of to the inside. I don't know. Maybe the wind was blowing across the track.

And I don't know. But I honestly think that in there again, the same case with with Heron, that they didn't they didn't want to play their cards that early. OK, so they wanted they wanted that guy leading to know they're hey, I'm right here with you. Right. It was just pull up on you.

Right. And you know, try to force them into an unforeseen mistake. Yeah. Just showing on wheel. Yeah, that could be it.

Just I did get the impression that he was actually trying to make a move. But maybe that was the wrong impression. Yeah. You're generally going into 10. If you're going to make a move, you're going up the.

Of course. Yeah. So by lap 14, Bobie gets past Cam Peterson for P5. But then something strange happened. We find out during the race that they've assessed a five second penalty on Bobie for starting from the wrong grid position on the restart.

I don't know if you know what what happened there, Scott. But the final results show Cameron in fifth. But apparently he actually officially, because of the five second penalty, didn't actually finish ahead of Cam Peterson. He finished sixth. So Road Racing World had an article just just basically saying what I just said, that, you know, the official that if you pull up the results, it shows him in fifth.

But apparently, officially, he wasn't in fifth because the five second penalty was not included in that. So that so it didn't. So don't reflect it on Moto-A's. No, no, it's strange. It's something strange.

But I couldn't I wasn't able to ascertain exactly what he did wrong. So maybe I'll try to look into that. It's it was it seemed like another bit of bad luck for. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So by the last lap, Schultz seems like he's having an issue with the bike and it slows down a little bit. And Bobby Fong gets gets by him for the lead on the back straight. Whatever the issue was, Schultz couldn't recover the time that he lost. And later after the race, he finished he finished three seconds behind Bobby Fong. So he didn't lose that much time, but significant.

And after the race, Schultz reported that his clutch started slipping, still able to maintain second. And then SDK put in another really good result for third. And JD Beach this time had a really good race, finished in fourth on the attack Yamaha. And, you know, we just talked about Bobie and Ken Peterson and sixth and fifth. Hayden Gillum, pretty good race, seventh position on the Honda Brandon Posh on the Suzuki right behind him in eighth.

And Ben Smith, ninth place on the other four horse Ducati. And then Richie Escalante rounds out the top 10. Those guys are all pretty close. That last group, they were all pretty close to each other, seven through 10. And just just a quick note on Superbike, local favorite Ashton Yates, son of Aaron Yates.

Yeah, he crashed on Friday in one of the practice. He crashed at the bottom of the hill going towards turn five. And the bike ended up on top of the air fan. Yes. And yeah, so I talked to Ashton in the pits on Saturday and he had during the crash had tweaked his one of his knees and he had it wrapped.

And he said, you know, I'm going to have to go get it looked at. He said, I could have probably raced, but I decided me and the team to on the Jones Honda team just to set it out and try to come back and be full speed for Barber. But yeah, I hated to see Ashton have that misfortune and yeah, all around because he's on those. Oh, that he's on the Superbike only this year. You know, last few years, he's raced the Superbike, the Superstock and the Superbike.

So he's just super back on with this year. And, you know, it's interesting. Just real quick, I talked to his grandfather, Lucky Yates. Nice. And Lucky's a he's a really good guy.

I mean, he's very knowledgeable, been drag racing and, you know, supporting Aaron in his motorcycle race and a lot of years. He was talking about the, you know, that team and which is Jones Honda. Anyway, Darrell Jones is the proprietor of that dealership. And apparently he's been very instrumental in, you know, working with Honda on the contingency programs they now have in place. But talking with with Lucky on the fact that Honda is back in the field and some of the things they have done since they came back, as far as back in HRC, a team in the paddock instead of just sponsoring races.

Yeah. You know, Honda was out of it. You know, no Honda Honda got out during the DMG year. Just they didn't want to be involved anymore. Yeah.

So having them back in the paddock. Yeah. Is huge. And the fact that they're back there, I think they're here to stay and that will only continue to see more things coming out of them. Those bikes getting more competitive.

So just just wanted to touch bases on that. I think I think there's some good things to come for, you know, for for the Red Riders, you know, as the as the this year and then years ahead. But it's great to have Honda back racing in the Superbike class. Yeah, absolutely. They were just, you know, they were a huge cornerstone of the series for for such a long time.

So, you know, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. After the Red Atlanta weekend, Scults is on top at 45 points, SDK with 36 points in second, Bobby A still managed to hold on to third in the points with 27. Bobby Fong with 25 and fourth and Cam Peterson in fifth with 23 points.

And then in the Superbike Cup standings, Andrew Lee leading there with 45, Dionne Campbell on the BRP Yamaha with 25, Carl Sultes, Supercarl third with 23, Chris Durbin with 22 and Emanuel Nicholas Aguilar with 20. Actually, him and Zach Schumacher tied with 20 points each in fifth. We're going to move on to briefly cover the Royal Enfield Build Train race class as well as the Baggers. So I'll hand this over to you, Scott. Yeah, we'll just touch on the podium results for the Royal Enfield Build Train races where the ladies race on their basically production bikes that they, you know, do some modifications on themselves and race in this class.

That's pretty interesting class. Good opportunity for these young ladies. So, yeah, in the first race, race one, you had Brianna Cutler taking the win, Jasmine Noel second and Brianna Everett rounded out the podium. And that was race one on Saturday. And then in race two on Sunday, you basically had a repeat of that Saturday podium.

You had Brianna Cutler, Jasmine Noel, Jasmine Noel and Brianna Everett. So those three ladies kind of stepped away from the rest of the field. I'm sure some of those other ladies as the season goes on that finish on them will hopefully be able to get up into the mix with them. But yeah, those three ladies won the weekend for the first round of that series. So if we move on over to the King of the Baggers, pretty much since the beginning of the season at Daytona, this is the Indian show.

They are dominating and amongst the Indian riders between Hayden Gillum, Troy Herfas and Rocco Landers. Gillum seems to really enjoy racing on the Indian after being on the Harley. So in race one, Gillum took the win. Wasn't that big a difference? Point one, six, seven was the difference between him and her first and second.

And former Moto GP, Ryder Bradley Smith on the factory, Harley Davidson was third defending champion. Kyle Wyman had an issue in that race and was a was a DNF. So not a good race for him, obviously. Did he crash or did he just have a bike issue? I think he crashed, Jake.

I can't say for sure. But it seems like he might have had an off. But either way, didn't trouble the scorers, as Julian Ryder used to say. There you go. Yeah, Jules, as Jules would say for sure.

So anyway, but that was Saturday's race one on Sunday and race two. Once again, Gillum, he made a little bit more of a statement on Sunday, taking the win by just over four seconds over his teammate, Rocco Landers, in second. And then Troy Herfoss on the other factory, Indian a couple of seconds back in third. You know, one interesting thing about the Indians package this year is that that factory program is now being ran by Vance and Hines. Yeah, yeah.

The Terry Vance is still around, right? He's is at the races every time. Yeah, he's still very involved. And that that that reminds me it's unrelated. Well, it's not unrelated, but it reminds me to mention the fact that Araldo Farachi is also has been at these races this year, which is pretty great to see.

I don't know how old he is, but he's pretty old. And I spoke briefly with Araldo. Oh, that's great. And he yeah, he's he's he's something else. That's he's a legend.

He's a legend and he still got the passion to show off. It's that's that's great to see. Yeah, for sure. So anyway, just a couple of other notable mentions. Bradley Smith was fourth, dropped back one Saturday's race.

And then Wyman came home seventh, the defending champ on the Harley Motor Company machine. A little bit better day, but still not what he's looking for, obviously. So for the points, obviously, Gillum is leading. Seems to be really enjoying himself. He looks like he's having a good time.

But interestingly enough, Herfas is just one point back of it. Yeah, because Herfas did win one of the two races at Daytona. Right. Yeah. So a really tight battle for the top position there.

Bradley Smith is back 55, Rocklanders 53 and Tyler O'Hara running out the top five at 42. I think we'll move on to the talent cup race one on Saturday. I'm not going to cover the qualifying race one. Sam Drain led the first couple of laps and Gouker then got by him for the lead. And then unfortunately, Sam Drain crashed out.

Behind them, there was a really great battle between Rossi and Kensei Matsudora, who eventually came through the field and won again for Team Roberts. He's having a good season. They look like they're definitely in the running. And then I'll I'll just do a quick shot out to Northwest native Sawyer Lafayette, who came in in ninth, like to give him a little support from the show. Final finishing positions were Kensei Matsudora on the Team Roberts.

Rossi Garcia right behind him, just like a tenth and a half behind him in second. Nathan Gouker third, Derek Sanchez in fourth. Nathan Betancourt fifth, Reese Frankenfeld or Frankenfield in sixth. Jake Page seventh didn't have such a good result. He's usually been right at the front.

I don't know if something happened to him during the race. Sawyer Lafayette ninth and rounding out the top ten is Bandit Lam. Yeah. And, you know, that top three was Nathan Gouker in third. And Gouker's writing for the Dell Quarterly racing effort.

So, of course, people that followed the sport back in the day and obviously remember the super privateer, Dell Quarterly. Yeah, but those two were all on the same second. So it was you could have thrown a blanket over those guys. Super good race for the for the top three positions. It seems to be the theme this year.

Like, it seems like there's a really good battle for the podium with the race, which is that's what we want to see. Right. Yeah. Last year, Alessandro DiMario, he pretty much ran off and hide. And yeah, just about every race, not all of them.

Right. For the most part, the dominant force last year in Talent Cup. So, yeah, good to see some good competition springing up right off the bat this year. Yeah. So moving on to race two on Sunday, right out of the gates on lap one, there was a huge crash at the calling it now the turn three chicane.

And this caused a red flag. Derek Sanchez ended up in the middle of the track. And amazingly, the entire pack behind him, which was, you know, at least half the field somehow avoided hitting him. Give a shout out to all those riders for not running over him. And on that part of the track, too, which is just a one line, you know, really hard to avoid people.

So that was that was impressive that not make it worse. You know, that's the worst. Could have been a lot worse. It could have been a lot worse. Yeah, it's really I've been in a couple of situations where you end up, if not running somebody over narrowly, avoiding them.

And it's it's it's scary. It's the last thing you want to do. Sure. So the restart was for five laps. Nathan Gouker just got out front and gapped everybody.

And a couple of laps later, he his gap got closed with Jake Page and Kensei behind him on lap five. Kensei, all three of them enter three wide, come down the hill into ten. And it was anybody's was anybody's guess who was going to come out ahead. But Kensei got it done and won the race. Guttelli, his strategy was really good and nice to see Kenny and Junior at the podium congratulating their rider.

So the final results were Kensei Matsudaira in first. Nathan Gouker right behind him in second. Jake Page rounding out the podium in third. And then Sam Drain putting in a pretty good effort getting getting fourth, turning his luck around a little bit. Nathan Betancourt in fifth.

Soria Lafayette put in a better result in sixth. So he's he's making some progress. And Ian Fraley in seventh. Bandit landers in eighth. Colton Schaeffer in ninth and Card Herb rounding out the top ten.

Yeah. Once again, Jay, the podium, I mean, you know, within a second of the top three. Yeah, within two tenths. Yeah. Yeah.

104 back for Gouker in second and point two to one back from him to Page in third. So some and, you know, we didn't get to see what Garcia Rossi Garcia could have done because he was in that crash. Yeah. Yeah. I sort of I didn't take great notes on who crashed out in during the red flag.

I apologize. I need to know. That's OK. Yeah. So it was definitely got some tight competition and talent cut this year, it looks like.

So should be some great race moving forward. Yeah, let's see here. So leaving road Atlanta, you've got Kinsey leading the points with 95. Nathan Gouker, second with 81. Jake Page, third with 54.

Sam Drain, fourth with 45. And Rossi Garcia did manage to hang on to fifth in the standings with 42. So I think we'll we'll close this out with the Twins Cup. I don't know if it's the biggest grid, but there was 29 riders on the grid for a race one. So that's a that's a pretty sizable grid.

They've been having grid sizes in the even mid and even upper 30s for the last year or two. So, yeah, Twins Cup is really healthy. It's good to see that. That's a good solid grid with, you know, eight or nine rows. So as we mentioned earlier, Sam Drain is one of a few riders running multiple classes.

So he's also running the Twins Cup. So he makes a pretty good start, gets gets into P three behind Vosburg and Aussie Bodie Page, who I mentioned earlier is Jake Page's big brother. Yeah, and actually qualified on PO Bodie did. So he was having a good weekend for the start. Yeah.

And unfortunately, Sam Drain crashed out pretty early in the race. And by lap five, Vosburg and Page were leading by nearly five seconds. But then again, as was kind of the theme this weekend, there was another red flag. And in this case, they had completed enough of the race for it to be deemed complete. I did notice a bit of a theme of a lot of the races getting red flagged.

I don't know if it's the early season jitters or whatever, but no serious injuries, I don't think, though, luckily. But but a lot of a lot of crashes that cause red flags in a lot of these. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I did see a theory on the on the motto on the Red Atlanta thread on the weir forms where somebody mentioned the Dunlop tire situation where the the you know, they have historically the Moto America tires were manufactured at the New York Dunlop plant, which closed last year. I guess it was Buffalo, New York, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Tana Wanda or something somewhere up there. Yeah. Supposedly, there's still some of those tires in circulation out there.

But I guess the majority of the tires are I'd heard Japan, but it may be another location where the tires are coming from. Now, there's some question, at least on the the forum chats about, you know, what's the situation with the Dunlops? Where are they coming from? You know, are there still some of the American made tires out there? So, yeah, I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

It really screws up the rhythm of the weekend, you know. I mean, it's you always expect maybe one or two over the weekend. But there was I don't know, there was five or 16 like. Yeah. And I think on on Saturday, the just the hot conditions, the track kind of greasy.

Could I have some play on at least on Saturday, but Sunday? You know, not the case. So, yeah, speculation. It's it's tough to as a racer to have a red flag and then have to go back in and wait and not know, not know what's happening, not know if one of your other rider friends got hurt. You know, it's it's pretty stressful.

Absolutely. Race two, Vosburg immediately crashed on the first lap coming down the hill out of turn one. But he did find his way back into the pits under his own steam. By lap two, there were several more crashes, which, again, caused another red flag, but this time early enough in the race to cause another restart. So on the restart was five laps.

Vosburg was allowed to restart because he was able to get back to the pits. So that was that was lucky for him. He was injured, actually. I mean, I had a friend there that was helping in the pits with one of the other guys. And on the restart, he was they were gridded up beside Vosburg and said, you could tell that he was hurting.

So tough kid to get out there. Right. And and do what he did. Well, yeah, he got back out there and didn't just survive. You know, he.

Right. That's very interesting. I wasn't aware of that. By lap four, there was a really great battle going on for the for the final podium position with five riders, including Kevin Olmedo, Bodi Page, Isaac Woodworth, Chris Parrish and Kyle Owensburg. Hey, Chris Parrish, let's hear one for the old guys.

Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. He's he's the he's the adult in the group. Right.

Oh, yeah. It's great. And, you know, he was the first champion, I think, in the Twins Cup class when upon its origination quite, you know, several years ago. But yeah, to see to see Parrish still out there on the ghetto customs back is pretty cool. Making it up for the kids.

Absolutely. Yes. Yes. So they battle for the final two laps very, very, very hard. Kevin Olmedo, you know, he ended up prevailing and got got the final podium position.

We will give a shout out to Sonia Lloyd, who Scott was able to interview. She came in in 13th with a solid result. Yeah. And in the race one, she probably would have had a similar result. I think she ended up 19th in race one, but she got a five second jumpstart penalty.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it was on the yeah, it would have been on the start on Saturday. So so she realistically, you know, would have had a couple of top 15 runs. So right.

And as you'll hear in the interview, she, you know, she was coming back from a pretty bad crash at Daytona that basically she was like out cold for about 30 minutes. So it's pretty scary for her to be back and, you know, making progress was a good sign. Yeah. Back on the horse. Good.

Good on you, Sonia. And just one more honorable mention, Kevin Almeida. You know, he used to be in the series and a few years ago, he, I think I want to say is Gillian's Bar Syndrome. He came down with an illness. I think this is his first year back full time in the in the Moto America series after missing a couple of years because of this.

This illness that he had. So to come back and be running, you know, and get the podium his first weekend back out. Well, he might. I guess he was at Daytona in the Twins Cup, but still good. Good shout out for Kevin Almeida.

Super good. Absolutely. We'll keep following that. That that's yeah, that's very inspiring. The final results for the for the second race of the Twins Cup were Matthew Chapin putting in a great a great effort to win.

And Hank Vosburg right behind him, apparently somewhat injured from his crash in race one to about two and a half seconds behind in second. And Kevin Almeida getting a great podium finish. Bodie Page pretty close behind in fourth and Isaac Woodworth right behind him in fifth. Chris Parrish, the adult, just a tenth behind in sixth. And then Kyle Owensburg as part part of that group in seventh.

And then Sam Drain didn't have such a good race, but he did finish. He got eight. Not sure if he's still coming to grips with with the bigger bike or whatever. But we'll follow that. Let's see how he does.

Andrew Way got ninth position and then Seth Dahmer rounded out the top 10. Yeah. And one more interesting note, Jake, is Kyle Owensburg in seventh. You know, he's been racing the baggers the last few years. And I think he's an engineer for Indian, actually.

Oh, wow. So we were talking about the multi-class guys. He's he is still running baggers this year, but he's also got this Twins Cup effort going. So that's kind of an interesting. It is.

It is. What a you just activate a different operating system, I guess, depending on which bike you're on. Yeah. Right. And then, man, if you're having to learn, learn a new track as well with two different bikes, that's that's a lot a lot of mental energy.

All right. You look at the points. Leaving Road, Atlanta for the Twins Cup. So Hank Vosburg managed to stay out on top at 86 in the first spot. Sam Drain, second with 63, Bodie Page third with 62.

So you got a couple of all season there. Chapin and fourth on the M4 X-Star Suzuki. Kevin Almey doing fifth. So it show in there. All right.

So Sam Drain is actually doing pretty well in Twins Cup. I I again apologize for my still coming up to speed on all this stuff. I I didn't realize that. So he's yeah, he had some pretty good results, I believe, at Daytona. Yeah, must have.

Must have. Yeah. Great. We're at two hours. It happens.

It does. I wouldn't have it any other way. And I do I do want to hear. I don't know. Let's just do it, Scott, while we're here.

You talked earlier about Scott Russell marshaling the races at Road, Atlanta this weekend. And you had a story about Scott Russell from about three decades ago. So I'm going to I'm going to ask you to tell that story, at least briefly, to close out. Yes. So, of course, being a Georgia guy and Scott Russell, you know, Georgia, Georgia guy, he's kind of the pride of Georgia as far as when it comes to motorcycle road racing.

And 1994, the last race of the AMA Superbike season, Road, Atlanta. And that was my first motorcycle road race to attend. And of course, Russell won the championship, World Superbike Championship in 93 and in 94. He was in a battle with Carl Fogarty for the title. But there was an opening in the World Superbike schedule that allowed him to come back and race Road, Atlanta.

And for that final round. Well, also that weekend, the in the last round was a championship battle that had came down to Troy Corser on the fastball for Achi Ducati and Jamie James on the Vans and times Yamaha. Colin Edwards, a young Colin Edwards was James teammate. So in qualifying, Edwards pipped Russell for pole and immediately started trash talking. So that was not a good idea.

So and of course, back then, they just did the one race on Sunday. So come race day, they as the race started, I think Russell was back fifth place behind, I think, Mike Smith on the Smokin' Joe's Honda Corser. Dave Sadowski was riding a privateer for Achi Ducati. And just just to remind everybody, this is the days of 750 CC four cylinders versus somewhere around 900, 950 CC V twins, mostly Ducati's at that point, or all the bodies maybe at that point. Yeah.

And as we said, it was also as we mentioned earlier about the Red Atlanta track, it was the last year that AMA Superbikes raced on the old configuration with the gravity cavities. Pretty exciting. So yeah. So the race started, like I say, Russell didn't get a great start, but I guess it was about the second lap and he decided to drop the hammer. One lap he went from fifth to first and pretty much immediately just checked out.

And he was on the same. He was on actually it's probably a World Superbike spec, Muzzy Kawasaki. It seems like it was the bike that Muzzy, Rob Muzzy had told him he was going to let him keep and he wanted to race it one more time before he put it in the living room. So yeah. So the race went on.

Russell checked out the battle for second. And for the points, champions was pretty interesting because you had you had Corsair, you had Colin Edwards and Jamie James and Dave Sadowski and Pascal Picotte on another Ferracchi. And as the race went on, James had an issue. The X upfell on his Yamaha stuck and he started dropping back. Well, I think Picotte thought that he was out of the race.

So he passes Corsair like, well, I'm just going to go ahead and win the race. You know, I ain't got to worry about, you know, being a team player here. Well, he didn't know is James didn't drop out. He was still running back about fifth or sixth. Well, then Edwards, who had been kind of trying to help out James, he goes to the front to try to take points away from the Cotty.

So that goes on. And as the race winds down, basically. And Dave Sadowski was super strong, you know, that there again, another not originally from, but basically at that time, a Georgia guy. And, you know, that was like his home track. And I honestly think Sadowski might could have won that or finish top spot behind Russell as far as second.

But apparently Ferracchi had came by Sadowski's pit before the races that day and said, you know, I need you to finish behind my guys. If you want to basically have a one of these bikes again next year. So like the last lap, Sadowski was like running second or third and drop. You could tell on the back straightaway, he dropped back and let Corsair by him. So anyway, as it ended up Russell, you know, took the win and dominate.

I think Picotte ended up second and maybe Edwards third. But anyway, Corsair won the championship for James by one point. Oh, man, that's great. So it was an epic race weekend and it hooked me, obviously, all these years later. You know, still a huge fan of the sport.

And as we said earlier, you know, the super sport race, you had all those guys out there racing in super sport as well. Right. Right. And you had Miguel De Hamel out there on the Harley VR 1000. So that was that one must have been the very beginning of that effort, because I remember Pascal Picotte ended up on that team on the Harley team.

You know, Scott Russell actually ended up riding that bike, too. I went to Loudon in the in 2000. And I really hadn't, you know, it's one of the first motorcycle races I went to. And I remember Pascal Picotte on the Harley. They were they were struggling, but I didn't realize that they were in the paddock for that long.

Well, you know, Shabby team that's been historically racing the BMWs and Moto American Superbike that Alex Dumas riding for this year, that they kind of at the last minute switched to the Honda. You know, Shabby was the he was the manager. He was the guy that ran that team for Harley. OK. Yeah.

So he's still in the paddock, too. All right. And interesting. Yeah. I love this history.

I think it's fantastic to bring it on to the show. So I appreciate that. I appreciate the opportunity. All right. Well, I think we'll close this out.

And Scott, thank you so much for the interviews and for doing my first show with me here for MotoPod covering Moto America. Oh, my pleasure, Jay. Glad. Glad to be on the show again. So with that, we'll close this out and wish you happy riding.

Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. OK. Scott Bolton here for MotoPod Road Atlanta Superbikes at Road Atlanta. Getting the 2026 season going, of course, already had the Daytona 200 weekend, but we're here in the BRP Yamaha pits and we got Brendan Kettleson, fast guy from the West Coast, kind of owned the middleweight class out of Chukwalla and for quite a few years here, last few years. And he's got a shot here at the full time gig, Moto America Super Sport, and we're glad to have him here.

Hey, Brendan. So yeah, I know you had a couple of shots here in Moto America, you know, last year or two with some Twins Cup stuff. First real full season effort on tap here in Super Sport. Started off season at Daytona. I know it didn't start out well for you, but just just give us a little bit of a little bit of a, you know, update on kind of what happened there.

Yeah. So I didn't get any time in first practice. My motor blew right away. Had a little bit of a mechanical. So like I was in the infield the whole session.

So I couldn't even come in and get the bike fixed or anything. So I went out for qualifying and my head was going a million miles an hour. I had a group in front of me that I I believed I could keep up with. I just asked for too much coming out of the second horseshoe. And I high sided myself pretty good.

The with the Daytona tires and the Daytona surface, I I didn't have a lot of time to understand how bad it is. So it just bit me. Yeah, you don't know till you know. So, yeah. But anyway, rough weekend there to start out the year.

But you filled up back here at Road Atlanta. Have you been to this track before? Is this the first time I've been here once in 2019? So quite a while ago. OK.

So so how did it feel out there? How quick were you able to kind of get familiarized with the place out here on the on the R9? I had the first session. I was I was fighting the bike a lot. It felt super heavy.

So I was just like putting laps down, just figuring out the track and the bike and how a super sport bike feels around here. And then came in, downloaded and we made a couple of changes, a lot of changes, the bike, actually. And I just the bike felt amazing, like super light and nimble. But I still need to figure out some lines and like figure out myself with this track and just figure out the times I was. I was doing a little bit of a debrief with my my crew chief, Derek Keys and Josh Hayes.

And we were looking at the our our times in the data. And he's slower than me in the middle. But I'm faster, which is killing my exit. So I just need to slow it down. I'm rushing it a little bit too much.

So I need to slow things down and get in the right headspace. Slow down to go fast. But hey, nobody better to have in your corner as a teammate than Josh Hayes. Here and anywhere in America. But, you know, here at Road Atlanta, for sure.

Absolutely. Josh has so much knowledge and it's pretty sick being his teammate for this year. It's awesome. Yeah, I'm sure that's great. So so yeah.

So going into Q2 tomorrow in the races, you know, you're feeling feeling somewhat confident. Yeah, like after that debrief, I feel like like I'll watch film tonight at the hotel and like download myself and sleep on it. But I think I have a pretty good plan for tomorrow morning. Sounds good. So, you know, for those listeners that aren't familiar with the CMVA, CVMA, Chuck Walla Valley, it's a track out in the California desert where a lot of racers during the winter go race and, you know, basically train, stay sharp for the, you know, you know, you got you got a lot of, you know, club racers out there, but you got some pros out there, too, you know, trying to stay sharp for the for the season, the next season ahead.

So it's not a joke by any doubt. And it's like I said earlier, Brendan's been the kind of the man out there in Middleway Super Superbike for the last few years. So so I mean, you know, different tracks, you know, different environment. But what from Chuck Walla is there anything from there you can other than track time that you can bring to here and other tracks coming up on the schedule? No, that track is unlike any other track.

Like it's all roll speed. And like here, it's it's a lot more braking. Like my max brake pressure here is like double Chuck Walla. It there's two high, like big brakes spots at Chuck Walla and here it's like everywhere. And it matters, too.

It doesn't really matter. Chuck Walla, it's it's all about flow. But yeah, it's mostly track time. Right. So and we don't have a bowl turn here like Chuck Walla does, which is pretty cool.

But yeah. So anyway, yeah. Well, you know, Brandon, we're we're Brendan, we're glad to have you on board here for the Moto America. You know, I think me and, you know, quite a few people that follows the sport, you know, whether it's at the pro level or, you know, you know, at the club level or the winter series or whatever. You know, we've noticed you out there.

And we've been keeping up with you. We're like, you know, this guy, you know, he needs a, you know, he deserves a chance out here. And we're looking forward to when it happens and, you know, seeing what he can produce. Yeah. And no better people than the BPR people.

I've got it. I worked with Derek as a crew chief in at Chuck Walla, and I got him now. And it just it my confidence levels out of the roof with him. And completing FP one and Q1 today is huge because I didn't get that much time at Daytona. So I'm in a better head space than I have been this season.

Yeah. To be able to bring the guy you're used to working with and that you trust, that's got to be huge. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. So, well, great.

So we're in the end of the day here, Friday. Looking forward to, you know, the second round of qualifying tomorrow and the races tomorrow and Sunday. So looking forward to seeing how you progress through the weekend here at Red Atlanta, Brendan and, you know, and through the season, the rest of the tracks, any any particular tracks that you, you know, kind of stand out that you are kind of looking forward to or maybe not so much? Of course, Laguna, because that's like my home track. But I've had a little bit more time at Virginia.

I've been there twice now. I like Rota America. Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to the whole season, really. Obviously. Yeah.

So, OK, well, good to bring in. Hey, appreciate your time joining us here on MotoPod. And best for the rest of the weekend in the season. Thank you so much. Here in the Celtic economy, Lou Warhorse to Cotty Pits, we got Darren Bender.

Sure, a few guys might have heard of him before. Hey, Darren, welcome to Atlanta. Thank you so much, but thanks for having me. Absolutely. It's always good to go Moto GP talent in the paddock here.

Yeah. So, you know, like I say, Darren doesn't really need any introduction to any of our listeners, I'm sure. But yeah. So, Darren, I guess let's start off by just talking about, you know, coming over here to the States, of course, started out the year at Daytona. And, you know, had a pretty good finish there.

Start kick things off in the super sport class. I mean, just just initially, what were your first thoughts when you rolled in there to Daytona? Yeah, the my first initial impression of Daytona was really nice. Like, I really enjoyed the track. Super fun.

Something so different to anything I've raised before. But yeah, in all honesty, I really, really enjoyed the race. I got to grips there pretty quick, like first practice already. I felt like I was quite competitive. And through the weekend, I got faster and I was there.

Just unfortunately, in the race, we had a slight issue with the bike. And yeah, it didn't quite work out to plan. But at the end of the day, I still managed to come home and forth, get some points because it's now part of the championship. So, yeah, overall, we figured things out afterwards. We know what happened.

So moving forward, hopefully we can keep those little gremlins away and be closer to the front. Yeah, first time in quite a few years that Daytona, the 200 has been part of the points. Of course, it's super sport now. And yeah, so that's the main thing, I think, with Daytona. Just come out of there with some decent points and, you know, kind of get trenched in for the rest of the season.

So I believe I'm thinking maybe you got to test here at Road Atlanta, but you did not. So this weekend's your first time here. All right. So thoughts on Road Atlanta? You know, with one day under your belt.

Yeah, I mean, getting here yesterday, I did the track walk. I've obviously watched a lot of previous races and stuff. Yeah, the trickiest part is definitely the first sector. I mean, coming up that blind rise into those tight flick flacks. Yeah, it took me a couple of laps to to find my my way around it.

But the rest of the track, I really enjoy it. It's more normal for me. I felt like I got to grips with it pretty quick. And yeah, in the second practice at the end, I managed to put a good lap together. And overall, happy with how things went on the first day.

I'm positive for tomorrow and hoping to keep improving a bit and hopefully be in the fight for the the front on the Sunday. Well, Saturday and Sunday. That's right. Both got to get two days of it. So, you know, you're part of the seemingly growing a South African contingent here, you know, in in Moto America, of course, we've had Maddie Scolts for quite a few years, Cam Peterson got Dominic Doyle.

So, I mean, how many of those guys do you know from from back in the homeland? Yeah. So before I went overseas racing Moto3 World Championship, I actually raced super sport back in South Africa. And at the time, both Cam and Maddie were racing with me. So, yeah, I've raced against them a couple of times.

And I'm good buddies with both of them. So Dominic Doyle was a little bit after my time. Obviously, I got to know him a little bit in Daytona and we racing together this year. So that's super cool. But, yeah, I'd love to be able to get on a super bike and race against my buddies again.

Yeah, that is pretty cool, for sure. So, you know, I guess it's your I would assume first time on a Ducati, you know, you know, racing. So what's your initial thoughts on the on the V2, I guess? Yeah, a couple of years ago, I got to ride a V4, like more street one, you know, just on a track day and that, which was cool. But yeah, first time out on the V2 and straight away, I really liked it.

I mean, we got to do two days in Roebling before Daytona. And that was straight away felt comfortable on the bike and really enjoyed it. And we was getting the setup more in my direction now that we had a more normal track, not Daytona. So slowly but surely making it my bike and really enjoying it. Yeah, that's awesome for sure.

So, yeah, so actually you're, you know, the the Celtic wars, you know, the economy loop team is all South African as far as riders, I guess, because it's you and Cam. Cam Peterson on the super bike. So, you know, Cam was on the super sport last year and he stepped back up to the super bike this year. So, yeah, that's that's pretty awesome. So, yeah, you know, it's just after, you know, it's one day in.

But, you know, so you're feeling pretty confident moving forward through the rest of the weekend, obviously. Yeah, I'm feeling confident. I mean, I ended today second. I think I was zero point two of Josh. So, yeah, overall, I'm feeling good.

I want to just fine tune a couple of things in the morning. I'm pretty sure the pace is going to be a lot hotter tomorrow morning when the temperatures a bit cooler. Everybody's dialed everything in. So, yeah, if we can make a nice step tomorrow morning, I'll be ready for the race. Yeah.

And speaking of temperatures, you know, it's kind of interesting. There's supposed to be a weather front move through here Sunday night. We've been, you know, for spring standards in North Georgia, pretty hot for the last or an actually a severe drought condition. So, yeah, it's been pretty warm for this time of year. Saturday evening, we're supposed to have a weather front moving through.

So, yeah, it'll be hot tomorrow. But Sunday, there's the chance that the temps may be, you know, 10 to 15 degrees cooler. So that that that could prove interesting. Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, I'm a fan of hot weather.

I preferred when when it's hot. So, yeah, but I mean, it's the same for everyone. And if it's cooler or it's raining, it is what it is. We'll take it as it comes and make the most of it. Yeah, absolutely.

We don't mind seeing the seeing the guys racing the rain. But, yeah, we'd rather if it can stay dry, that'd be good. But the good thing about it is we don't have the summertime humidity levels that we normally have here in the South. So that's a positive. Yeah, I mean, I don't really mind the humidity too much.

I haven't experienced this humidity, but, yeah, hot races are normally quite enjoy. I just feel like when you put your letters on and you're sweaty, that was feel a little bit more comfortable. So I enjoy it. Absolutely. So, you know, I mean, I know it's only your second race weekend in the Moto America paddock, but, you know, what's how's the paddock vibe for you?

You know, is it a little bit more relaxed and a little more easy going than what you've been used to the last several years? Yeah, I mean, there's obviously similarities between the two paddocks and stuff. This is a little bit different with regards to the truck and no pit boxes. But in all honesty, I really love it. I mean, as well, I've got a super cool team.

You know, I've actually been at the shop with them for like the last five days just spending time with them. Good group of guys. I'm really enjoying my time here. And, yeah, I like that it's a little bit more chilled. In all honesty, it's it's nice to be able to just relax a little bit, and it's not so serious.

But, yeah, really enjoying it. So, Darren, I hate to bring this up, but I'd be remiss if I didn't. So Kayla Yakov, 50th at the line at Daytona for the third on the podium. Have the guys been giving you grief about that? Or, I mean, is your first time there?

So, I mean, you know, you know, she had some experience there previously. And, you know, so, you know, it's OK. But and she's she's pretty special in her own right. So, but yeah, that the guys hadn't give you too much grief over that, I hope. Yeah, I'll tell you back home, I've taken my buddies have definitely given me a bit of grief.

But I take my hat off to Kayla. She rides really well and she did a super good job in Daytona. My race didn't quite go to plan. We were dealing with a bit of an issue in the race that was definitely slowing us down. So, yeah, I would have liked to have been fighting for for the win.

But, yeah, I ended up fighting for the podium and Kayla got the better of me. So, yeah, I talked to her and not super cool to see. And we'll see what happens in the next couple of rounds. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, first time at Daytona, come out with a top five fourth place.

That's nothing to be ashamed of. No, I mean, I'm happy. Honestly, at going into Daytona, I had some trouble with my arm. I ended up breaking it in a training accident. And literally until the Thursday the week before, I wasn't riding.

I had to get cleared by a doctor and I wasn't too confident that I was going to get cleared. But luckily, the bone had joined. So they cleared me and I flew straight out Friday morning into Atlanta. Got two days at Roebling Monday, Tuesday. So, yeah, our preseason didn't go to plan at all.

But luckily, we managed to get there and get some points on the board. So keep us in the mix for the moment. So how's the arm now? All right. Now it's good.

Even in Daytona already, like I was so happy because I was quite worried about that. But even in a long race, it seemed to hold up just fine. And yeah, my training program is back to normal now and feeling good. Makes the fourth place finish even more impressive. Hey, Darren, appreciate you joining us here on MotoPod.

We're super, super excited here to have you over here in America in the Moto America paddock for this season. And just just looking forward to seeing, you know, seeing you up there battling with the guys for the wins this weekend and for the rest of the season. Thank you so much for having me, but I'm looking forward to it, too. Awesome. Thanks, Darren.

Pleasure. We're here in the after care Shabby Racing, Jones Honda pit. And we're here with Alex Dumas for listeners here in the States. If you've been following Moto America from the initial days, you would probably recognize that name. Alex was with us in 2017.

In the I believe it was the Red Bull. 390 cup RC Cup. Yeah. Where you got it. I think you got a few wins that year.

And then in 2018, Alex went to the first year of the Junior Cup and promptly won the championship. Twenty nineteen, he stepped up to Twins Cup and won that championship. And twenty twenty, he moved up to the stock one thousand class, I believe, with Team Hammer Road Racing World. And got a few podiums, but had an injury that year. So anyway, just bringing you up to speed a little bit.

Alex has been a core. Alex is a Canadian. And for the last several years, he has been racing the Canadian Superbox Series. But he's back with Moto America this year, and we're super glad to have him back. So since we got you brought up to speed a little bit, Alex, welcome to MotoPak.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. So so like I say, obviously, you know, you're not a stranger to the Moto America paddock. You've had quite a bit of success here.

As far as, you know, when you left here and went back to the Canadian SuperSport or the Canadian SuperBike Series. Was that I mean, I know that's around the same time COVID hit. What did how much did that play into it? Just as you know, along with just, you know, the trying to get a ride and whatever. I mean, what was the dynamics of the decision to to focus on the Canadian SuperBike?

It's a good question. Well, for twenty twenty one, I had a contract or there wasn't any team that was offering me a ride. So I kind of wanted to stop. And then there were an opportunity back home with my old crew chief to do a team together. So it was me and him.

And he owned the shop. So all the bikes, everything was at his shop. And yeah, it was just like a really small team. We did it for three years. It was good.

We won the first year and then finished checking the two years after. But yeah, so that's how pretty much it started back home in Canada for the SuperBike. And then this year I was planning on stopping again. And I've got a got some got in contact with Steve from somebody, a third party. And yeah, he offered me to try out his SuperBike at the Dakota test earlier in I believe in March.

So, yeah, it went pretty good. I mean, I haven't ridden my motorcycle since last August. So it's been five months from there. So yes, it was fun. And a couple days ago, I see like a week ago, he called me back and asking if we're with.

I mean, if I'd be interested in doing stock, well, SuperBike Cup with the Honda instead. So I said, yeah, sure. And then here we are. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. You know, we're used to Shabi, Steve Shabi, of course, since he's been in Moto America, doing a SuperBike on the BMW with various riders of Ashton Yates.

Of course, now, you know, kind of, I guess, say my teammate, I guess you could say maybe that some of the Jones Honda here in the paddock on the SuperBike. But yeah. And then, you know, I was looking at the entry list for Road Atlanta. I knew you'd tested with them at Kota and I didn't. I didn't see you guys on the entry list.

So on the were forms, Michael Bassani, your daddy guy, he's on there. I was like, Michael, you know, everything good. Don't see you guys on there. And I didn't hear anything back from him. And then, you know, you know, last week, I saw the updated entry list and I saw Shabi Honda, you know, with you riding it, which was like, wow.

So that's one didn't see that coming. But that's pretty cool, you know, because obviously Honda has, you know, got getting are getting back into the Moto America paddock of the last couple of years. And, you know, HRC is making a return, which is wonderful. And yeah, so obviously some I know in the last few years, I'm sure this year, too, offering some pretty good contingencies. So, yeah, good, good move on all parts, I think.

So you've obviously been here at Road Atlanta before, but coming back this weekend. Any any any new revelations or just trying to refamiliarize or, you know, being on a being on the 1000? What's your thoughts on it just with one day under your belt? So for sure, I thought I remember it more than I do. So I mean, I know the direction, I know the corners, but it was hard for me.

The blind spots where you don't see the next corner, those kind of it was kind of tricky this morning to try to get it back. Some good reference point and everything. So, yeah, for sure, it was not like going to New Track, but almost. It's been a couple of years. So for sure, it's going to be like this for all year long.

So it wasn't bad. And I really like this place. I love it. And yeah, I'm really happy to be back. So.

So obviously, you know, as we said earlier, you tested on the BMW Koda in the test back in March. So from that bike to the Honda CBR 1000R, what what's the takeaways, you know, right off from that? Well, for sure, the Honda is a it's a pretty stock bike compared to the BMW where the BMW was a full on superbike from Tithers Racing a couple of years ago. So for sure, it's a it's a big difference in how it looks and how it performs power wise. But overall, I'm really impressed with the Honda, how it handles.

And I mean, I've only got that's my second day on it. So, I mean, it's pretty good. And we're far from having a really good setup. But we're I mean, it's pretty still pretty good. So I'm really excited.

Yeah, I guess I guess you guys got to do a test at Talladega GP over near Barber. And that's pretty much it until today. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think what were you I believe you were P15 in the Q1 today, is that right? I think so. I didn't check overall, not just I mean, for for the superbike cup, you would have been in the top five, I'm sure.

But yeah, I'm thinking that's where I saw you at. So, yeah, I mean, you know, it's obviously going to be a bit of a learning and building curve for you guys, you know, this weekend and then moving forward. But so, of course, next round, we're going to Barber. I'm pretty sure you've had some success there. So you're looking forward to that.

Yeah, that's for sure. I'm going to using this weekend as a test weekend, even though it counts and there's points and everything. But yeah, I'm just starting off slowly. And then at the end of the year, the championship is there for Superbike Cup, then good for us. But I'm really using this year for kind of just trying to make the bike better and just improving the bike and just working with the team.

So so far, I'm having a lot of fun. So I guess there after you went back to the Canadian Superbike, I guess there was a time where you kind of stepped away a little bit. And, you know, like like you said, you were maybe considering stepping away again before this opportunity came up, maybe. So so what does this do to your thoughts for the for the future? Does it kind of revitalize things for you that maybe this is a I don't know what you'd call it, a second or third chance to to to make to make a real go of it?

I mean, you've obviously shown before when you were here previously and what you've done in Canada that you've got the talent. So so kind of where you at on that. So for for this year, I can if I would have done again, like racing in Canada, I would have stopped just because I was kind of tired of it. And then this year, having a opportunity to come back in America, that kind of put a smile on me. And I was just like really excited and happy to be back.

So that kind of motivates me more than just racing back home on less nice tracks. So, I mean, for me now, it's I do it as a really fun hobby. And I'm really I mean, I feel really privileged to have this like the you know, have to the opportunity to ride in such a like nice environment with good people and good team. So I think it does a hobby. But I mean, I don't know what the future can come.

So we'll see. So maybe kind of, I guess you could say kind of rekindled the fire of it, maybe into so to speak. It does. Yeah, today's my was my first day kind of like pushing pretty hard since like a couple of years. So I'm seeing like fast guys and trying to, you know, trying to go really fast.

And yeah, it kind of did something to me. So it's I like it more than I thought. That's awesome to hear. Well, Alex, or I think I can speak on behalf of not only myself, but a lot of the Moto America fans and the paddock. We're we're super stoked to have you back here with us in the paddock and like say, after what you've done in the past and just knowing the talent that you that you bring and, you know, hoping, hoping it leads to good things moving forward.

And you're here with us for, you know, for, you know, several years to come. And with much success is what we're looking, looking for and hoping for. So anyway, good luck for the rest of this weekend and for the season ahead. And I appreciate you joining us here on Moto Pod. And yeah, it's like say the future is looking bright.

Got to wear shades. Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be a fun year, I'm sure. Awesome. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you very much. OK, Saturday here at Superbikes that Road Atlanta Day two. And we're here in the M4 X-Star Suzuki pit and in Twins Cup. Riding for them this year is Sonia Lloyd. Sonia, thanks for joining us on Moto Pod.

Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this. Awesome. Yeah. So, you know, there's one really popular female racer in the paddock here right now.

But you're you're coming on up, you know, you've been around here a few years. Just give for fans that may not be familiar with you a little just brief history of since you started racing, I know you kind of started late compared to a lot of a young racers do nowadays. But anyway, so, yeah, what's the what's the story from the beginning? Yeah. So, well, first off, Kaylee Yakov is my hero.

I really look up to her. But I grew up in the American flat track paddock, actually following my dad around. And then I didn't start racing till I was 17. And I started on a dirt track. So when I was 20, I swapped over to road racing and just taken off since then.

I just turned 24 last week now. So going into my fourth year of road racing. Yeah. So you started out, I guess, road racing to a couple of was it two years in the BTR build train Royal Enfield? Just one year in that and then moved up to Twins Cup from there.

That's right. You did some Twins Cup and then you went over to W. W.C. W.C.R. Yes, sir.

OK. And yeah, so that was obviously quite the experience and a lot of learning. Big learning curve over there. But I sure you brought some good experience back with you. Yeah, no, every year has been a pretty big learning curve for me so far, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I mean, BTR was my first year of road racing and then Twins Cup was a pretty big jump from that, but I just learned so much. And yeah, World W.C.R. is a whole another level. So but I'm happy to be back. I'm excited to see what we can do in Twins Cup this year on a new bike, using everything I learned over there.

I really want to I want to do well in this championship now. Yeah. And of course, like I said, kind of the unconventional route. You're a recent from the last year to grad from the University of Georgia. And you told me one time you're what you majored in.

You'll have to remind me of that. Biological engineering. Yeah, I mean, that's some people might think that's a fancy name for a custodian, but obviously not. You know, that that sounds like some pretty serious stuff. Now, you were are you working for Siemens USA still?

OK, yeah. So I've got a day job racing racing on the weekends. So. Speaking of dirt track, obviously, anybody that has followed dirt track for any number of years is familiar with your dad and your uncle, the Lloyd brothers. And also, you know, did some road racing back in the day, I think, and it was the Moto ST Endurance Series.

Yeah. So so, yes, I guess I think I've heard that your dad really wasn't that crazy about your racing. He was going to be fine if you just went another route. Yeah, I wasn't really allowed to ride too much when I was little because he's seen the highs and the lows of racing. But no, now he's now he's fully on board, making sure I'm the safest I can be out there is really why he supports me so much.

And yeah, it's been an amazing thing to share with him. And we've grown really close to it. So it's been really cool for me, too. And I think he's he's learning to love it. But he's he'd be OK if we left tomorrow.

We'll just say that. Yeah, I'm sure the racer at heart and got to like it a little bit. But yeah, it's this little girl out there. So I get it. Hey, so Daytona.

It was good until it wasn't. So just just a few memories from the Daytona round back in March. Yeah, we were doing really well, shaving off a lot of time, learning this new bike. Unfortunately, the first lap of the second race got taken out with a crash that happened behind me and kind of slingshot me into the ground directly on my head. So unfortunately, was knocked out for a solid 30 minutes.

Spent the night in the hospital, slept for pretty much a full week after that. Don't remember too much of that. But no, doing doing fantastic now, we're about a month or month and a half after that now. So fully back to 100 percent feeling really good. But yeah, definitely a really scary one for all of us, the team and myself.

Yeah, I was watching that on the American live. Yeah, I was I saw the rider down and they weren't moving. And then I realized it was you and I thought it might be you. And so I didn't I didn't get an update on you for several days. I was pretty concerned about you.

But when I when I finally heard that I saw a post from your dad that answered somebody's question that you were. Yeah, took a pretty good knock, but otherwise we're OK. So yeah, yeah, they they didn't tell my team really either for about 45 minutes. It was a lot of up in the air just making sure I was all right. But no, I can't thank everybody there enough.

Carl Price, who was here at the track, saw me first and got to me. And yeah, no, they made sure I was good. I got a couple of stitches, too. But overall, no, I got really lucky with that one. Scared a lot of people.

Yeah, definitely. I said real quick, just under this weekend, we've got the qualifying practice qualifying out of the way. Race is coming up, the race one this afternoon. How are you feeling? Feeling really good.

We are changing a ton of stuff with the bike, changing a ton of stuff with my riding style. So just trying to match things up a little bit better. Didn't quite qualify where I wanted to, but I think we've definitely got the pace to get up with the with the front front guys, the front group. So, yeah, just going to keep pushing in the race and see what we can do. So second time on the twins has got to got to be instilled a little bit more confidence since you got some prior experience.

Oh, yeah, I know what it feels like to line up on this grid now. So I'm I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. We'll look forward to see how you do out there today and tomorrow and and for the rest of the year, for that matter. So glad to have you back in the paddock full time with us and best of luck for the rest of the season.

Thank you so much. Now it's going to be a great season. I know it. Absolutely. Thanks, Sonia.

Thank you.