Binder and Herrin Take Their Supersport Title Fight to VIR

The MotoAmerica Supersport championship arrives at Virginia International Raceway for Round 8 with a familiar pair firmly in control of the title fight.

Darryn Binder leads Josh Herrin by 19 points entering the weekend, and through seven rounds an extraordinary statistic remains intact:

Nobody else has won a Supersport race this season.

Binder Rebuilds His Advantage

Binder enters Virginia with 273 points after increasing his championship advantage at Mid-Ohio. The increase was significant because it marked the first weekend since Road America at the end of May in which Binder actually expanded his lead over Herrin.

Binder also reclaimed the lead in the races won category having seven wins to Josh Herrin’s six.

Darryn Binder

Herrin remains close with 254 points, but as we near the end of the schedule every opportunity to take points from Binder becomes increasingly important.

The two have effectively monopolized the top step of the podium all season. VIR gives the rest of the field another chance to finally break that streak.

Josh Herrin

Yaakov and Scott Finally Get Some Separation

Behind the championship leaders, Kayla Yaakov and Tyler Scott have spent much of the season locked together in the standings.

For the first time, there's some breathing room between them. Yaakov enters VIR in third with 171 points while Scott sits fourth with 144, a 27-point gap. Yaakov is now 102 points behind Binder, making a championship challenge increasingly unlikely, but third in the standings remains very much hers to defend.

Scott, meanwhile, has another fight developing behind him. Josh Hayes sits fifth with 141 points, only three behind Scott, while Blake Davis is another 10 points behind Hayes.

The championship battle may belong to Binder and Herrin, but the fight immediately behind them remains anything but settled.

Davis Returning to Form

Blake Davis looks like he is returning to the race-winning pace he had last season. There were periods at Mid-Ohio where the young rider was catching the lead group before having to bring the pace back down a bit to get to the checkered flag. While other teams that run the Yamaha R9 are also finding set ups that work them and making their way to the front, the 20 year old rider for Strack Racing is from this area and knows this track well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Davis is the first person not named Darryn Binder or Josh Herrin to win a race this season or if it happens this weekend.

Thirteen races have produced only two winners. Eventually, somebody else is going to break through and VIR feels like a very good place for it to happen.