Millville, NJ – September 11, 2021 – On Saturday at New Jersey Motorsports Park, Westby Racing’s Mathew Scholtz not only finished on the Superbike podium for the 11th time in this year’s MotoAmerica Championship, his second-place result was the fifth time he has finished as runner-up this season.

 

And, while winning races is obviously the number-one objective of Mathew and the team, the consistency, which includes their current six-race podium streak, has given them a stone-cold lock on second place in the point standings, with a gap of nearly 60 points to the third-ranked rider with five races left in the season.

 

Starting from the middle of the front row, Mathew got a good jump off the line and tried to overtake Jake Gagne on the opening lap, but he ran out of room. After that, Toni Elias overtook Mathew, but Mathew had good pace and got past Toni as the race approached the halfway point. From there, Mathew maintained second place all the way to the checkered flag.

 

“Second place, I kind of have to be happy,” Mathew said. “Obviously, we would like to win, but Jake (Gagne) is on form now. It’s kind of nice to be the next-best guy after the Attack Yamaha. At this point it’s pretty clear to see that they have the best package. So, it’s always good to be up there. I think Jake beat us by seven or eight seconds, which is a little bit far, so we’re just going to go back to the briefing room now and try to figure out what we can do better. The first five or six laps, I felt good. We did a 21.2, 21.3, and I felt comfortable. Then, I got to lap five or six, and I was just pushing the front and sliding out of almost every single right-hand corner, so we’ve got to try to figure out how we can kind of hook up better. Obviously, if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to pass Jake early on because once he settles into his own groove and he’s gone, he definitely has a better pace than everyone else. So, hopefully, tomorrow I’ll be able to get a decent jump and try to do something out of the first couple corners. For now, just got to be happy with this second place. I had a decent battle with Toni. It’s always good to see him back up here. Happy with the Yamaha sweep of the podium. Just a big shout-out to the Westby Racing team. We’ve been working hard. We completely changed the motorcycle about four or five rounds back, and I feel like we’ve been making steady progress forward. So, we’ve just got to keep on working at it and just chip away a couple tenths, and we should be right there.”

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Ed Sullivan, Westby Racing Crew Chief said, “Solid race for Mathew and our team today. Another strong second place. We have some changes ready for Sunday morning warm up, and I’m confident we will make the step needed to get Mathew up fighting with Jake.”