TEAM ROADRACINGWORLD.COM ANSWERS THE CHALLENGE AT MID-OHIO

Team Roadracingworld.com Suzuki battled through a difficult weekend at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for Round 8 of the 2009 AMA Pro Road Racing season.

Chris Ulrich gained valuable experience with his developing '09 GSX-R1000 American Superbike during the stop at a venue where he boasts a past AMA Superstock victory, but misfortune in qualifying and the races prevented him from showing his full potential.

Ulrich wasn't able to get in his planned fast lap when Superbike qualifying was red flagged and concluded a few minutes short of the scheduled time. As a result, he started from 14^th on the grid with a fast time of 1:28.183.

The Californian picked up a position in the opening race, finishing a lonely 13^th and hoped to improve on Sunday after further dialing in his racebike with the knowledge gained in Saturday's 50-mile final. However, an electrical problem dashed those hopes and ended his race early.

"In qualifying we put the soft tire on too late and that was pretty much the deal," Ulrich explained. "The red flag came out for the incident when David Anthony crashed, so that kind of caught us out. We went out with three minutes to go and were trying to push hard. The balance of the bike has been improved but we're still lacking in some areas with the machine and we're trying to sort those out before Topeka.

"We learned some stuff in Saturday's race and applied that to the Sunday race but the bike had s small technical issue that put us out of the race, unfortuantely."

Ulrich is currently ranked 12^th in the American Superbike title race with 100 points.

AMA Pro SuperSport East Division title hopeful Russ Wikle had a similarly tough outing. After qualifying ninth at 1:32.935, Wikle was running seventh in the race aboard his GSX-R600 but crashed out while exiting Turn 1 on lap 6. Despite the spill, he holds down third in the championship battle with 63 points.

Ulrich remarked, "Tough luck for Russ and that hurts in the championship but what can you do? Sometimes you have bad weekends and this happened to be a bad one for us."

Colombian Santiago Villa rung up 20^th and 27^th place finishes in the weekend's AMA Pro Daytona SportBike finals while Wikle came home in 26^th and 29^th. Wikle is 23^rd in the points at 38 while Villa is 28^th with 22.

On July 31-August 2 Team Roadracingworld.com Suzuki will travel to Heartland Park Topeka, in Topeka, KS for Round 9 of the 2009 AMA Pro Road Racing championship.

"We're going into the unknown," Ulrich said of the new addition to the calendar. "Russell did a track day there last week and I've been there doing two-seaters. We're going to go out there and see if we can make something happen. We'll strive to make some forward progress."