With just one week to go before World Superbike returns to the USA for the first time in four years, some of the championship's star riders have been giving their opinions on the forthcoming Miller Motorsports Park event.
The 3.048 miles (4.876 kilometre) track, near Salt Lake City, is hosting the sixth round of the 2008 championship and marks the third different venue for a US WSBK round after Brainerd (Minnesota) from 1989 to 1991, and Laguna Seca (California) from 1995 to 2004.
None of the current crop of WSBK riders have raced at the state-of-the-art Miller circuit, which only opened in 2006, so first practice next Friday will be step into the unknown.
However all have expressed enthusiasm about racing at one of the safest, most advanced - and fastest - track layouts in North America.
Double WSBK champion
Troy Bayliss' American experience began in 2000 when he set pole position at the
Daytona 200 Miles event, before Ducati Corse moved the Australian to the world championship as replacement for the injured Carl Fogarty.
"I miss America and so am happy to be going back there," declared the Ducati Xerox star, who currently holds a 78 points championship lead during his final season of WSBK competition. "In one way I'm sorry we're not going back to Laguna, a track I enjoyed and know well but, having said that, I met the owner and designer of the Miller track while at Assen and saw the layout and it looks like a great track too.
"To be honest that is about all I know of the track at the moment, it looks pretty safe but might also get very dusty so we'll have to see when we get there. I have good memories of racing in America, I guess my last visit was when I was in GP and I did ok so yeah, I'm looking forward to going back there again!" he added.
Another two-times world champion
Troy Corser - together with Ben Bostrom, Anthony Gobert and John Kocinski - is a three-time winner of the US round, and he returns to the country where he won the AMA title back in 1994, the first non-American to do so.
