Last weekend’s Alitalia Aprilia one-two in the United States was my best result to date and gave me a great feeling.

The event took part at the Miller Park circuit near Salt Lake City, Utah, and the weather had been changeable right up to qualifying day when it suddenly turned warm and dry.

Again, this was a circuit I hadn’t been to, so it was a learning process aboard the RSV4 Factory and in untimed practice, I managed to hook on to a number of riders who were familiar with the circuit to get me up to speed.

I made it through to the final timed superpole qualifying in eighth and was pleased considering I’d never seen the track before. My team-mate, Max Biaggi, qualified second behind Carlos Checa (Althea Ducati).

Race one started under cloudy but warm conditions and as the lights went out I got a blinding start, sweeping across the track to tuck in behind Biaggi, who had taken the lead. However, by turn three, Checa managed to get under me dropping me down to third and at the end of the first lap, Checa managed to get past Biaggi and started to build a lead.

Behind me in fourth was Troy Corser. I managed to hold third until six laps from the end when Leon Haslam got under me on one of the slower corners – putting me down to fourth with Nori Haga on my tail.

With four laps remaining, my front tyre started giving me serious grip issues and Nori got past. But up front the gremlins were working for Checa who lost a substantial lead when his bike stopped three laps from the flag with his electronic fly-by-wire throttle malfunctioning. This moved everyone up one position, gifting Biaggi a win and pushing me back up to fourth.

From the start of race two, it’s a long drag to the first corner and the top-end speed of the Aprilia got me up to fourth as we came out of the first corner. Checa was again in the lead being chased hard by Biaggi while Corser was the target ahead of me.

Fourteen laps from the end, Checa pulled out with the same problem, giving Biaggi the lead once again and promoting me to third but hard on my heels was Cal Crutchlow. With nine laps to go I got past Corser, lifting me up to second and managed to fend off Crutchlow to make it an Aprilia one-two.

Biaggi’s wins put him in the championship lead by 15 points from Haslam while my results pushed me up to eighth.

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