ALTON, Va. — The last time MotoAmerica stopped at Virginia Int’l Raceway, Josh Herrin left Alton with a 31-point lead in the Supersport Championship he would ultimately win.
After a two-year hiatus, MotoAmerica returns to VIR with Herrin atop the 2025 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship by 31 points.
Josh Herrin and his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati arrive at VIRginia International Raceway with a 31-point lead in the 2025 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship. Photo by Brian J. Nelson
In May of 2022, VIR hosted the second round of the MotoAmerica Championship. In 2025, VIR is round number six, and Herrin’s 31-point lead comes after 11 impressive races for the defending MotoAmerica Superbike Champion and his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati Panigale V4 R.
Herrin has won five of the 11 races with five additional podiums (two seconds and three thirds). Herrin’s only non-podium finish came way back in the opening round of the 2025 series at Road Atlanta when he finished fifth. Since then, he’s been virtually unstoppable.
If you can call two second-place finishes in a row a chink in the armor, then Herrin now has the tiniest of chinks. After winning five in a row, including the first of three races in the most recent round at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, Herrin was beaten in races two and three at Laguna Seca by Attack Performance Progressive Yamaha Racing’s Bobby Fong.
Fong showed that he’s a force to be reckoned with after finishing second to Herrin in race one and then beating the championship leader in races two and three. The two wins were the first of the year for Fong, and he adds those to his five runner-up finishes.
In total, it puts him 37 points behind Herrin in the championship, but there’s plenty left to play for, and the two VIR races may prove to be pivotal in the ’25 title chase. Fong, however, has an 11th and an eighth-place finish on his scorecard, and he can’t afford any more lackluster finishes as the series heats up in the dog days of summer.
Fong’s strong Laguna Seca weekend puts him just six points behind Tytlers Cycle Racing’s Cameron Beaubier. Surprisingly, Beaubier came out of the Laguna Seca round, his home race, with just two thirds and a sixth-place finish after remounting from a crash out of the lead in race one. Everyone expected more of Beaubier at Laguna. No one more so than Beaubier himself.
This weekend’s two races at VIR are by no means must-win races for Beaubier, but we’re getting close to that. Neither he nor Fong can allow Herrin to come into Alton and win both Superbike races.
Fong’s teammate Jake Gagne could prove to be a bit of a spoiler as the championship heats up. The three-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion heads to VIR with the knowledge and confidence of having won the last two Superbike races in Virginia in 2022. He’s also the only rider other than Herrin, Beaubier, and Fong to have won a Superbike race in 2025.
Gagne continues to get stronger, and he is coming off a third, a fifth, and a fourth in the three races at Laguna Seca. Gagne is fourth in the title chase, but 59 points behind Herrin.
Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Richie Escalante seems to be stuck in the rut of finishing somewhere between fourth and sixth, though he does have a third-place finish in his points tally from Road America.
Escalante’s only non-finish was in the first race of the season, and he sits in a solid fifth, 22 points ahead of Real Steel Honda’s J.D. Beach.
Although Beach’s main goal is to win the MotoAmerica Superbike Cup for those competing on Stock 1000-spec motorcycles, he’s proving to be a thorn in the side of many a Superbike rider. At Laguna Seca, Beach was fourth, eighth, and sixth.
Somewhat surprisingly, Beach is nine points ahead of his Honda CBR1000RR-R SP Superbike-mounted teammate Hayden Gillim. Gillim’s Laguna Seca weekend was one to bury somewhere that he never sees it again. Over the course of the three races, Gillim only scored 17 points, and we shouldn’t even bring up the fact that he appeared to be on the road to two Mission King Of The Baggers wins when he suffered mechanical failures in both.
Sean Dylan Kelly’s season has sort of derailed after a start to the year when he finished fourth in four straight races on his Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki. The results have plummeted downhill since then with his fourth-place finish in race two at Laguna Seca bookended by crashes in race one and three. Kelly sits five points behind Gillim.
BPR Racing’s Bryce Kornbau and FLO4LAW/SBU Racing’s Benjamin Smith are ninth and 10th, respectively, in the title chase as the series arrives in Virginia. Smith has non-finishes in three of the past five races and is just a single point behind Kornbau.
