The defending SunTrust MOTO-ST Series champions Aprilia USA/Lloyd Brothers Motorsports will start on pole position for Sunday’s VIR SunTrust MOTO-ST 500k at Virginia International Raceway in Danville, Va. In the first qualifying session in the series two-year history Ty Howard of Weatherford, Tex. took the No. 1 Aprilia Tuono 1000R around the 3.27-mile VIR track in one minute, 59.443 seconds for an average speed of 98.557 miles per hour. Howard and teammate Mike Himmelsbach of Quakertown, Penn. won the season opening event at Daytona International Speedway and the No. 1 Aprilia leads the standings in the Buell Motorcycle Company SuperSport Twins (SST) class heading into this weekend’s second round of the series.
Looking to make up ground, Team SpeedWerks.com is hoping to score the Sport Twins Class victory at Round 2 of the 2008 SunTrust MOTO-ST Series, April 27 at Virginia International Raceway. “This is definitely going to be an important round for us,” says team owner Steve Long. “We had an electrical problem on our No. 87 Suzuki SV650 at the season opener at Daytona which left us sitting in 12th place. It was really a bummer since we had a commanding lead and were running fifth overall. We did put our No. 86 Suzuki in fourth which softened the blow somewhat. Now we definitely need to step it up.