In the hot, wet heat at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course during Friday’s practice for the AMA Superbike Championship series, Pirelli riders earned three of the top-six places in Formula Xtreme practice, with Ben Attard setting the second fastest time overall on his Attack Kawasaki. Attard’s best lap time was less than two itsy-bitsy hundredths of a second from the time of fastest rider of the session, Josh Hayes.

Third fastest, Less than two tiny tenths behind Attard was his teammate, Steve Rapp, also on a Kawasaki ZX-6R and also using the same Pirelli Diablo Superbike Slicks used to sweep the podium at the 2007 Daytona 200. Rounding out the top six in FX practice was Columbian racer Martin Cardenas; this newly signed rider committed to continuing through 2008 with Team M4 EMGO Suzuki. Racer Cory West, on his Chuck Giacchetto-prepared Yamaha R-6, set the ninth-fastest time of FX practice.

Final Formula Xtreme qualifying saw Pirelli riders taking three places on the front two rows of the grid for Saturday’s race, with Ben Attard leading them with a place on the outside of row one. Steve Rapp and Martin Cardenas secured the sixth and eighth spots on the grid for Attack Kawasaki and M4 EMGO Suzuki, respectively.

In Friday’s Supersport practice, five Pirelli riders were in the top 13 with Ben Attard again leading them with the third-fastest lap of the session for the Attack Kawasaki team, barely four-tenths of a second off Jamie Hacking’s time, quickest rider of the session. Other top-performing Pirelli riders in Supersport include M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Geoff May with the seventh-fastest time on a GSX-R600, Attard’s teammate Steve Rapp at eighth fastest, May’s teammate Martin Cardenas at 11 quickest, and M4 EMGO Suzuki’s young racer Michael Beck, with the 13 fastest time, each of these riders using the Pirelli Diablo Supercorsa DOT road racing tires.

Also, in Friday’s super-humid heat at Mid-Ohio, the singular Superstock practice had M4 EMGO Suzuki’s Geoff May setting a front-row time of fourth fastest. Seventh fastest in the session was the ever-quicker Robertino Pietri, continuing to take his Roadracingworld.com Suzuki GSX-R1000 to new levels. Pietri’s teammate, Chris Ulrich, also turning up the juice with many top-ten performances this year, set the tenth fastest time. Scott Jensen, riding for HALOF Racing, was 13 quickest, a few spots outside his common top-ten placing.