PIETRI ON THE PODIUM AT ROAD AMERICA, BARNES FIFTH
Team Roadracingworld.com overcame adversity to claim a tremendous double top-five result in this weekend's AMA Superstock race at Road America.
The weekend started on a down note when Chris Ulrich, who entered the weekend ranked fourth in the Superstock points chase, was injured in a Thursday practice crash and was forced to join teammate Santiago Villa on the shelf. However, reigning Latin American and Venezuelan Superbike champ Robertino Pietri and super-sub Michael Barnes came through and stepped up in his absence.
On Saturday Pietri earned another front row grid position by posting the fourth fastest time of qualifying at 2:16.431 aboard his Pirelli-shod GSX-R1000. Barnes lined up a row behind after clocking the seventh quickest time of the session at 2:17.398.
After the two settled into the fight for the podium, Pietri made a late push past Alastair Seeley for third on the penultimate lap and held on for his first-career AMA podium finish. He crossed the stripe just over three seconds behind race winner Blake Young on the Team M4 EMGO Suzuki.
'Barney' scored a fifth-place finish, making good on Ulrich's pre-race goal for the team to place both riders in the top five in the 10-lap race.
Pietri said, "It was fully wet at the beginning and my visor was fogging up a little bit. Towards the end starts drying a little bit, but since the fog was there I couldn't really see, so it took me a little bit to get into a rhythm. The first four laps were a disaster, I think I was back in seventh or something. Barney passed me and I knew I could roll with him because in the morning I was faster than him and he passed me and he looked very smooth while I was like fighting with the bike. I said, 'Okay, you need to relax, breathe in, start hitting your marks and ride like you did in the morning'. You know I started doing it and I started to feel I was catching the guys at the front a little bit and it was great.
"I'm super excited. This is my first podium and this is my dad's birthday today too, so happy birthday!"
Ulrich explained what happened in his fall. "I've been healthy for a few years now and it seems like we've had pretty good luck crashing lately. It was one of those deals where we looked at what we did last year here in the wet and it was because we went out on Thursday and fine-tuned the bike and tried some settings. With that in mind, we did the same thing this year; I tried some different suspension stuff and we were going okay -- we were already faster than we qualified last year with minimal effort -- and I didn't feel I was pushing that hard. I don't think I was taking any risks because I knew in the back of my head it was only Thursday and we didn't have to. I was just exploring and seeing how everything goes.
"The lap before I went pretty quick and I just went through Turn 6, up shifted into second, went into 7 and just cracked the throttle and it spun. I knew I was in trouble when I was holding onto the bars, looking down at the gas tank. It spat me off, I hit my head a little bit. I landed on my left side, hand-first. I bent my hand back to the point where it blew a 3mm hole in my hand. But that finger was fine. I ended up breaking my second metacarpal and my thumb.
"It's unfortunate. We're out for this weekend for sure but we've got six weeks until Laguna for Superbike and we're going to do that and I should be 100% by Mid-Ohio."
Team Roadracingworld.com Suzuki will be back in action at Laguna Seca as the AMA series plays host to the MotoGP World Championship on July 18-20.
The weekend started on a down note when Chris Ulrich, who entered the weekend ranked fourth in the Superstock points chase, was injured in a Thursday practice crash and was forced to join teammate Santiago Villa on the shelf. However, reigning Latin American and Venezuelan Superbike champ Robertino Pietri and super-sub Michael Barnes came through and stepped up in his absence.
On Saturday Pietri earned another front row grid position by posting the fourth fastest time of qualifying at 2:16.431 aboard his Pirelli-shod GSX-R1000. Barnes lined up a row behind after clocking the seventh quickest time of the session at 2:17.398.
After the two settled into the fight for the podium, Pietri made a late push past Alastair Seeley for third on the penultimate lap and held on for his first-career AMA podium finish. He crossed the stripe just over three seconds behind race winner Blake Young on the Team M4 EMGO Suzuki.
'Barney' scored a fifth-place finish, making good on Ulrich's pre-race goal for the team to place both riders in the top five in the 10-lap race.
Pietri said, "It was fully wet at the beginning and my visor was fogging up a little bit. Towards the end starts drying a little bit, but since the fog was there I couldn't really see, so it took me a little bit to get into a rhythm. The first four laps were a disaster, I think I was back in seventh or something. Barney passed me and I knew I could roll with him because in the morning I was faster than him and he passed me and he looked very smooth while I was like fighting with the bike. I said, 'Okay, you need to relax, breathe in, start hitting your marks and ride like you did in the morning'. You know I started doing it and I started to feel I was catching the guys at the front a little bit and it was great.
"I'm super excited. This is my first podium and this is my dad's birthday today too, so happy birthday!"
Ulrich explained what happened in his fall. "I've been healthy for a few years now and it seems like we've had pretty good luck crashing lately. It was one of those deals where we looked at what we did last year here in the wet and it was because we went out on Thursday and fine-tuned the bike and tried some settings. With that in mind, we did the same thing this year; I tried some different suspension stuff and we were going okay -- we were already faster than we qualified last year with minimal effort -- and I didn't feel I was pushing that hard. I don't think I was taking any risks because I knew in the back of my head it was only Thursday and we didn't have to. I was just exploring and seeing how everything goes.
"The lap before I went pretty quick and I just went through Turn 6, up shifted into second, went into 7 and just cracked the throttle and it spun. I knew I was in trouble when I was holding onto the bars, looking down at the gas tank. It spat me off, I hit my head a little bit. I landed on my left side, hand-first. I bent my hand back to the point where it blew a 3mm hole in my hand. But that finger was fine. I ended up breaking my second metacarpal and my thumb.
"It's unfortunate. We're out for this weekend for sure but we've got six weeks until Laguna for Superbike and we're going to do that and I should be 100% by Mid-Ohio."
Team Roadracingworld.com Suzuki will be back in action at Laguna Seca as the AMA series plays host to the MotoGP World Championship on July 18-20.
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