Ten Kate Honda Racing’s Ryuichi Kiyonari heads to Miller Motorsports Park in Salt Lake City, USA this weekend (29-31 May) for round seven of the 2009 World Superbike championship looking for a return to the form that netted him two podium finishes in Monza, Italy earlier this month. The last flyaway race of the year to Miller marks the halfway point of the season and Kiyonari has yet to find the consistency of performance that saw him take three race wins in his rookie season last year. Other than his two third place finishes at Monza, Kiyonari’s best result of 2009 has been a fourth place in race two in Qatar and the Japanese ace is looking to challenge for podium finishes again in America. Ryuichi Kiyonari championship position 11th After the two podium finishes at Monza, it was very difficult to race at Kyalami just one week later and not even get into the top ten. I’ve been back in Japan since the last race, relaxing with my friends and family, and it has given me a chance to do a lot of thinking about what happened. All I can do now is go to Miller with a positive frame of mind the kind of positive feeling that I had two weeks ago in Monza and last year when I won some races. The bike is strong, there is no doubt, and we have a good base setting. We also know that it works very well at Miller because Carlos Checa won both races last year, so I will try my hardest to make it work for me as well. I was slow to learn the track last year but I will be stronger this weekend and aim for much better results again. Ronald ten Kate team manager We’ve made some progress with the CBR1000RR since round three in Valencia and Kiyo-san was able to capitalise on this at Monza with two podium finishes. Unfortunately, we couldn’t back that up a week later at Kyalami so our job this weekend is to find that Monza form again. We’re aiming to get him fighting at the sharp end again and back to the podium. He is happy with the base setting, so we’ll look at Kyalami as an ‘off’ weekend, and look forward again to Miller.