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M4 Suzuki>> CARDENAS AND TEAM M4 SUZUKI EXTEND CHAMPIONSHIP LEAD AT ROAD AMERICA

June 11 2009

Team M4 Suzuki's Martin Cardenas extended his AMA Pro Daytona SportBike championship lead on Saturday at Road America thanks to a skillful and calculated ride to the podium.

Dealing with the treacherous cold and rainy conditions, the Colombian had to appropriately balance the risk with the reward. He settled into a comfortable yet brisk pace and appeared to be well on his way to a solid top-ten finish late in the race.

However, he was given a renewed shot at the top three as the laps wound down in the incident-filled event, as the Safety Car came out for a second time following a full-course yellow and bunched up the field with just two laps remaining. Martin guided his GSX-R600 back up into contention and finished third, only missing out on stealing away the runner-up position by 0.004 seconds at the checkered flag.
The result was Cardenas' seventh podium of the season and opened up his title advantage to an imposing 32 points.

"Today's race was good for the championship," the former Spanish Supersport champ said after the tricky contest. "It was very tough to race in these conditions. In the warm-up I almost crashed a couple times so I was very nervous. At the beginning some guys came by me and I tried to stay with them. Some I could and some I couldn't but I tried to stay in my rhythm and not lose too many positions. After the second Safety Car, I concentrated and did two very fast laps hoping to gain some positions and it worked. I ended up on the podium and I'm happy with that result."

Teammate Jason DiSalvo came away from the race with some valuable championship points of his own. The New Yorker led early after opening the contest from pole, but was dropped down the order while making sure he avoided the kind of major mistakes that resulted in several of his rivals' exit from the race.

In the end DiSalvo wisely settled for 12th, retaining fourth place in the '09 SportBike championship battle, and will look to put himself in position to claim his first victory of the season in his next attempt.

Cardenas and DiSalvo will be out to add to Team M4 Suzuki's already abundant 2009 trophy collection Sunday afternoon in the Road America weekend's second 13-lap Daytona SportBike contest.

M4 Suzuki is sponsored by Hotbodies Racing and uses our windscreens and bodywork on all of their bikes. Hotbodies Racing specializes in manufacturing high-performance parts for high-performance sportbikes, and is the North American distribution of KR Tuned performance parts. Hotbodies Racing is the market leader in Undertails, Huggers, Windscreens, Flush-Mount Signals, Megaphone Exhausts and full-race Bodywork. Hotbodies Racing supports the sport with sponsorship around the world and encourages dealer and distributor inquiries. For more information visit: www.HOTBODIESRACING.com.