James Ellison and the PBM UK team will be in action in round ten of the MotoGP World Championship as the first of two successive rounds in the USA takes place this weekend starting at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

The 11-turn, 2.238-mile jewel of a road course on California's beautiful central coast near Monterey will see the 31 year old from Kendal hoping to score points for a fifth successive race aboard the Claiming Rules Team (CRT) specification Aprilia ART following success at Silverstone, Assen, Sachsenring and Mugello.

But whereas points are vitally important, Ellison will be looking to take top honours in CRT which he managed at Le Mans en route to a superb 11th place earlier in the year for the Penrith based team in their debut season in MotoGP.

Last time out at Mugello, former World Endurance and double European Champion Ellison battled with the leading CRT bikes throughout the race and was unlucky to miss out in the latter stages so will be hoping to put that right in the Californian sun where he and his American wife Sarah have been acclimatising since the previous round in Italy.

In the Team's Championship, PBM UK holds tenth out of the 14 contenders, just a point behind Speed Master in third overall in the CRT standings. The CRT class is headed by the two-rider Power Electronics Aspar Team of Randy de Puniet and Aleix Espargaro in eighth place.

James Ellison:

"I'm really excited to be racing back in the USA as it's my second home and I just love being in America. Laguna Seca is in my top three all time favourite tracks so to be riding it on the Aprilia which I'm really enjoying riding at the minute will be awesome! We made a step forward with the upgraded swinging arm in Mugello which gave us more grip and we have one in the second bike this weekend too so that should help us. I need to start clawing some points back on the Aspar riders in CRT so as usual I'll be digging deep."

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