Kurtis Roberts, the 29-year-old son of three-time 500cc World Champion Kenny Leroy Roberts and younger brother of 2000 500cc World Champion Kenny Lee Roberts, is back in action after a 10-month layoff from professional road racing. Kurtis Roberts’ career has been filled with highs and lows. He has won AMA Championships in Formula Xtreme and Supersport and won two AMA Superbike races. He has not enjoyed the same success during his seasons racing in the 250cc and MotoGP World Championships, and satisfying full-time ride offers have been hard to come by in recent years. Last season, Roberts started the AMA season with NFS Racing, but the newly-formed team encountered problems from the onset and disbanded in May, leaving Roberts without a ride. He then joined his father’s Team Roberts in the middle of the 2007 MotoGP season. At first, Roberts came on to assist with the development of the chassis Team Roberts built around a 800cc RC212V engine, and then he took over the role of primary rider when his brother decided to take a break from racing and left the team. Roberts’ best MotoGP finish last year was 12th at Sachsenring, in Germany, and he finished 19th in the Championship with 10 points. But with rides hard to come by in 2008, Roberts once again found himself without any desirable job offers and has spent the season on the sidelines. That is until this weekend at Road Atlanta, where Roberts will race a Dunlop-shod Suzuki GSX-R1000 for Celtic Racing. “I got an email from these guys [Celtic Racing] asking if I wanted to do the race. This just came about at the end of last week, Thursday night,” Roberts told Roadracingworld.com. “Now I’m just blowing some rust off. It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden a road race bike, 10 months since the last GP last year at Valencia.” Roberts realizes he cannot win the Superbike races on his Superstock-spec machine, but after riding the bike on Thursday he said his goal in the Superstock race is to finish on the podium.