M4 SportbikeTrackGear.com Suzuki’s David Anthony battled through mixed conditions and mixed results at Road America to conclude the fourth round of the 2015 MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Championship on an up note.
Following a sunny weekend of racing at Virginia International Raceway, the rainstorms that had defined the opening two rounds of the ’15 season returned as the series visited Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. The rain caught out the Australian in Friday’s Supersport qualifying session, as the wet conditions came before he registered an ideal lap time around the four-mile long venue. His best lap from that session (2:22.495, 7th) would have to do, however, as further rain on Saturday morning eliminated any hope of improving upon his provisional grid position. That left Anthony with work to do aboard his Suzuki GSX-R600, twice starting the weekend’s twin Supersport contests from the third row.
Saturday’s contest was also waged in the wet. He sliced up multiple positions in the early going, but crashed out of contention while pushing to make up ground. Anthony bounced back on Sunday to score a solid sixth-place result.
“We missed the boat in qualifying on Friday,” he admitted. “Qualifying was dry then wet and we didn’t get a quick one in and ended up on Row 3. In Saturday’s race we started off a bit slow. I was making progress and moved up to fourth, but apparently I was pushing a bit too hard and threw it down the road.
“It was a dry one today, but again, we didn’t have the best start. I got stuck behind a few guys early on and once I got around them, the lead group already had a gap and that was pretty much it. There are some fast bikes out here and at a track like this, once you lose the draft it’s pretty much impossible to catch back up.”
Anthony is looking forward to coming out swinging when the series picks back up on June 12-14 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. “Barber should be a good one for the M4 SportbikeTrackGear.com GSXR-600. That track is all about handling and our bike handles with the best of them. I’m looking forward to it.”
