MIST Suzuki have taken the tough decision to withdraw from the remainder of the 2009 British SuperBike season due to lack of available funds. After a difficult season that would have tested any of the top SuperBike teams MIST Suzuki has decided to focus their efforts on searching for sponsorship and to continue the development of their races bikes. This would allow everybody to step back in to the series ready to race at a competitive level should we find the additional support needed to attend any of the remaining rounds. Team Manager Mike Edwards commented “Everyone is extremely disappointed but for a new team to the SuperBike class I think we have done well despite being seriously hampered by the non-delivery of many essential parts, especially as we are almost unique amongst the privateer teams in that we chose to develop a new bike from scratch. We are privately funded and staffed entirely by volunteers although some people put in more hours with the team than doing their full time jobs. We had a reasonable budget to complete the season but with so much bad luck we have struggled to get this far. Having a bike written off due to no fault of our own before it had managed to complete a single lap of it’s first race was really hard and it took us several rounds to bounce back.” Mike added “Developing a new SuperBike in a team that had no SuperBike experience and with a rider who had only ever ridden in the SuperStock class was always going to be a challenge but I think we have learnt an incredible amount and are confident we can have everything in place to do well if we can secure the budget to continue. As it is we are already making plans and looking forward to the 2010 SuperBike season and would love to put in another appearance before the end of the year if it was possible.” With no pre-season testing due to the late delivery of the bikes the team were confident of doing well in the SuperBike Cup although it took longer to achieve their first podium than expected on what was essentially a SuperStock bike at the time. Long time rider Matt Bond chose to retire soon after and things were once again complicated after the original replacement for Brands Hatch, Sheridan Morais, was drafted in to the Factory Kawasaki World SuperBike team that were also guesting at the event. Steve Mercer gallantly agreed to stand in at the last minute but with no time to adapt to the Ohlins gas forks and Brembo monobloc callipers it was decided not to risk damaging the rider or the bike as Steve was due to compete in the Ulster GP a couple of days later. Looking back on the season Mike commented “Had we been in the same position again the smart thing to have done would have been to have bought a SuperBike from a larger team that had campaigned it the previous season. As a long time supporter of Suzuki we were keen to try the new for 2009 GSXR1000K9, having purchase and raced eleven new bikes from them since 2006, as it looked to be a major improvement over the previous model. I don’t regret the decision but without all the bad luck we are left to imagine only of what might have been.”