The first World Supersport Championship race to be held at Miller Motorsport Park in America will be a new experience for the Provec Motocard.com Kawasaki duo of Joan Lascorz and Katsuaki Fujiwara. Last year only the World Superbike teams made the trip to America, and for the vast majority of the World Supersport field the circuit will be all-new, adding yet another complication to what will surely be an intense and competitive race weekend. In the overall championship fight Lascorz is a creditable fifth after six rounds, in his first season as a Kawasaki rider, having scored two podium places on the new Ninja ZX-6R already. Fujiwara looks forward to another weekend when he can move up the order, as he now sits 13th, only five points from a top ten placing despite two early season no scores. His immediate target is to beat his season best of fifth, which he took at the Valencia round last month. The Miller circuit, like the previous round at Kyalami, is a high altitude location, and at 4.907km in length, it is also relatively long by modern standards. The state-of-the-art facility was a popular place for the WSB class to visit last year, and the track layout itself features a wide variety of elevation changes and corner designs. Miller will be the turning point of the season in one way at least, with the seventh round signifying the end of the first half of the 14 round season. After Miller, the next round takes place at Misano, on June 21. Joan Lascorz: “It was frustrating to get so close to a podium at Kyalami then just miss out, but we have another chance to improve on that this weekend. Most of the riders in WSS have never been to Miller before, just like us. We have made improvements in the race set-up since the start of the year and I want that to continue in America.” Katsuaki Fujiwara: “We didn’t get the kind of result in the race at Kyalami we were aiming for so I am looking forward to a better finish in America. It is a new track for us but that will be the same for most of our competitors. We should be starting the weekend on an even level. I will give my best, as always.” More, from a press release issued by HANNspree Ten Kate Honda: Hannspree Ten Kate Honda’s pairing of Andrew Pitt and Kenan Sofuoglu head for a new circuit on the World Supersport championship calendar this weekend (29-31 May) at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City in Utah, USA. Although the World Superbike championship made its debut visit to the 4.9km circuit close to the famous Bonneville Salt Flats last season, it’s a new adventure for the World Supersport series, which is making its first visit to the USA since Laguna Seca in 1999. By its own remarkably high standards, the last few races have not been easy for the Hannspree Ten Kate Honda squad since 2007 champion, Kenan Sofuoglu, won the opener at Phillip Island, Australia in March. A third place at Valencia, Spain in round three has helped Sofuoglu to third in the standings, while reigning world champion Andrew Pitt’s two second placings in Australia and Qatar have been his only podium visits in the six races to date. Despite showing good pace throughout practice and qualifying last time out at Kyalami in South Africa, when both riders started from the front row, Sofuoglu and Pitt faded from the front with rear grip issues, finishing in fifth and sixth places respectively. Kenan Sofuoglu championship position 3rd I’ve been at home in Turkey since returning from Kyalami, just relaxing and not training too much. We went back to basics at Kyalami, to a base Ten Kate setting on the CBR600RR, and it worked throughout practice and qualifying. In fact, we were confident of a really good result in the race but something obviously went wrong with our grip after just three or four laps. We’ll sit down and discuss it with Pirelli but we just have to put it behind us now. I was at Miller last season on the Superbike, so at least I will have a bit of track knowledge for the early sessions as everyone else gets up to speed. I know we have been making good steps forward with the 2009 CBR and we’ll continue that at Miller this weekend, and hopefully get a better result for the team. Andrew Pitt championship position 4th From Kyalami I went to stay with Ben Spies in Texas and we’ve been doing a bit of a road trip in his motorhome the 1300 miles (2100km) up to Utah including a stop for a real Texas burger, which had to be followed by a couple of hours on the bike! We need to do something this weekend to find a way that will allow us to keep up our qualifying pace through the race. It’s clear that we’ve got to step up to the level that’s been set this season and, to do that, we’ve got to find a little extra from the bike. We’ve got some ideas on how to go about that this weekend and we’ll give it our best shot, of course. It’s a new track for everyone except Kenan, but I watched a couple of races with Ben, who knows it pretty well. We’ll walk the track together and probably confirm that it’s another straight followed by another corner! Misano was new to me last year and I won the race there, so let’s hope that’s a good sign! Ronald ten Kate team manager At Kyalami we were front runners all weekend and produced our best qualifying performance of the season so far. The longer runs we did in practice also boosted our confidence for Sunday so it’s a bit of a mystery why the results in the race were not so good as we expected. We have some good indications of which way we need to go though, and I truly believe that we are on the verge of having both our riders back in the hunt for race wins.