Gaige Herrera used a near-perfect starting line reaction time and the power of his RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Suzuki Gen 3 Hayabusa to win his second Pro Stock Motorcycle race of the season and reclaim the championship points lead at the Gerber Collision & Glass NHRA Route 66 Nationals at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, IL, on Sunday.
After strong winds forced the postponement of Friday’s second round of qualifying, reigning Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Gaige Herrera continued his clean sweep of qualifying in 2025 by taking the top starting spot with a 6.717-second/202.33 mph run on Saturday. His third-straight number one qualifying performance this season and 26th of his career came in the second of three qualifying rounds in an extended afternoon session.
Herrera also won the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge on Saturday, a race within a race contested during qualifications in which semi-finalists from the previous race compete head-to-head for a cash purse and championship bonus points. It was Herrera’s first #2Fast2Tasty Challenge win this season and the eighth of his career.
Herrera advanced out of the first round of Sunday eliminations with a solo 6.713-second/200.86 mph pass that was the quickest elapsed time of the round. In round two, Herrera went low-ET again with a 6.743-second/199.43 mph victory over John Hall (6.836 seconds/197.39 mph). Herrera advanced to his second final round appearance this season and the 26th of his career with a 6.763-second/199.85 mph victory over Chris Bostick (6.886 seconds/195.39 mph) in the semi-finals.
After a short staging battle on the starting line that drew cheers from the crowd, Herrera opened his final round run with a near-perfect .005-second reaction time and capped it off with a 6.777-second/198.90 mph performance that easily outpaced Smith (6.805 seconds/199.02 mph). The victory, Herrera’s second this season and 23rd of his career, moved him back to the top of the championship standings with an 8-point margin over Smith and extended his career final round win-loss record over his rival to 5-1.
“Me and Matt always bring out the best in each other when we race. We’re both good at not letting other riders get into our heads, so sometimes we play with each other on the starting line to see if we can mess each other up. I lit the stage bulb and then backed out of it on purpose just to mess with him, then we whacked the throttles back and forth a little bit. It’s all in fun, but it’s also a way to try to get a little edge. I ended up with a better light, and ultimately, I had the better motorcycle this weekend, which showed on the scoreboard,” Herrera said. “It’s great to see so many motorcycles in the class running so closely. It’s good for the class and it makes for exciting racing, which motivates me even more as a rider to try to get everything I can out of the performance of myself and my Hayabusa. Parity is good and it’s what the class needs. I’m really looking forward to the next race at Bristol. It’s a beautiful facility that I’ve had some ups and downs at, but I love racing there.”
Richard Gadson qualified third with a 6.737-second/202.27 mph run on Saturday.
In round one, Gadson defeated Lance Bonham (9.263 seconds/134.85 mph) with a 6.723-second/200.98 mph pass that was second quickest of the round. Gadson succumbed to Steve Johnson (6.809 seconds/195.36 mph) in round two with uncharacteristic hole shot loss. Despite making a quicker 6.765-second/199.08 mph run, Gadson came up about three-thousandths of a second short of advancing to the semi-finals.
“In the past I’ve coached myself to not be too aggressive on the tree, but there’s also such a thing as being too relaxed on the starting line. Sometimes if you take too much of that competitive edge off, you do stuff like what happened today. I just wasn’t aggressive enough, and win lights are too hard to come by out here to do that,” Gadson said. “I had a strong motorcycle this weekend and I feel like I could have won this race. But a short memory is a good virtue in drag racing, so I’ll shake it off and come back at next race in Bristol wanting more. I have a motorcycle that can run with the fastest bikes in the class, so I just need to stay strong and aggressive.”
RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Suzuki crew chief Andrew Hines said Herrera’s win was even more satisfying thanks to a deliberate decision by the team to have him compete this weekend on a spare Hayabusa that is normally reserved as a rental machine for guest riders.
“We know all our motorcycles are fast. Sometimes there are hiccups, but that’s all part of the game. They don’t give the Wallys to you out here, you have to go out and take them. We’re super excited about the performance of our Hayabusas. It was great to bring our spare bike out and give Gaige a win on it,” Hines said. “We wanted to prove that our spare is as good as our two main motorcycles and do some setup tuning on it. To be able to win on it shows the Vance & Hines team’s passion and the preparation it takes to have the best equipment out there.”
After the third of 15 rounds in the 2025 Pro Stock Motorcycle season, Herrera and Gadson sit first and third in the Pro Stock Motorcycle standings with 332 and 221 points, respectively.
The RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines team returns to action June 6-8 at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway in Bristol, TN.
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