M4 Superbike Road Atlanta
Team M4 Monster Energy Suzuki’s Sunday in the American Superbike class was similar to Saturday’s effort. John Hopkins made yet another spirited charge up through the field and Chris Ulrich secured another solid top-ten result.
Hopkins didn’t get an ideal start, dropping to eighth following the opening lap and then running off course in Turn 10 on the following circulation. However, he didn’t give up, putting his head down and slicing his way back up the order.
Coming from several seconds back, Hopkins closed in on the scrap for fifth with just four laps remaining and quickly worked past both riders to claim the position at the checkered flag. John Hopkins finished the Road Atlanta AMA SuperBike double header with a pair of 5 places.
Ulrich registered another measured ride, settling into eighth early and holding the spot for the remainder of the 20-lap final. Chris now sits sixth in the championship standings with 76 points on the strength of five top-ten rides in six races while Hopkins is ninth at 62.
"I think I rode pretty well this weekend but we got behind from the get-go," Ulrich admitted. "We got it a bit wrong on the first day and we really didn’t catch up until today. We made a big gearing change and a little chassis change for the race and kind of rolled the dice because my pace just wasn’t there yesterday or this morning. It paid off in the race and we were quite a bit better, but we needed to be where we ended up today on Friday morning and then refine it from there.
"But to struggle a little bit like we did this weekend and get out of here with two top tens is a good performance and we gained some points and moved up in the championship."
Team M4 Monster Energy Suzuki will next head to Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA on May 14-16 for Round 4 of the 2010 AMA Pro Road Racing season.
