James Ellison gets OMG Suzuki call up for Assen BSB round

James Ellison will ride for his third different outfit in the 2019 British Superbike Championship at Assen this weekend after being called up to replace Josh Elliott in an expanded three-man OMG Racing team.

A 15-time race winner at BSB level and a former MotoGP rider, Ellison began the 2019 BSB season with Smiths Racing but exited after round seven having struggled to find form on the BMW S1000RR, before joining the burgeoning Bike Devil Sweda MV Agusta outfit from round nine at Oulton Park.

However, having shown points-scoring pace on the MV Agusta F4RR at the Cheshire venue, an incident in which he struck the back of a slowing rider at 120mph caused significant chassis damage to the bike, leaving him without a ride at Assen this weekend.

 

 

 

 

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This is what happens when you run into the back of someone on track doing 120mph while they are doing 40mph looking at their dash. Gutted for the whole @mvagustaracinguk Team, all the boys worked tirelessly all weekend making progress in every session so to miss both races on Sunday due to something out of our control was hard to take. Fingers crossed we can raise the funds to get the bike rebuilt for Assen and the rest of the season. I think the only thing that survived was the engine, handle bars and myself (barely)

A post shared by James Ellison (@racingellison) on Sep 8, 2019 at 4:35pm PDT

Nonetheless, Ellison will be on the grid in the Netherlands aboard a Suzuki GSX-R1000 campaigned by OMG Racing, which announced earlier this week its plans to run a trio of superbikes for the first time. He joins Luke Mossey and Billy McConnell, though the latter remains a doubt after injuring himself in an accident at Oulton Park.

"I’m very excited for the opportunity to ride the OMG GSX-R1000R at Assen, Paul and the team are great guys and we’ve met a few times this year through our connection to Powerslide Motorcycles,” Ellison said. “I know the bike is competitive and had the opportunity to ride a stock bike GSX-R at Donington track day, so I should settle quickly and hopefully we can have two good races this weekend.”

“Big thanks to James for standing in for us on short notice, he’s a great rider with heaps of experience in the Championship,” team principal Paul Curran added. “After working with him a couple of times this season through Powerslide Motorcycles, the opportunity arose. James is a great rider and we look forward to seeing how he does on the bike at Assen.”

The rider change comes in the week OMG Racing announced it would be switching machinery for the 2020 BSB Championship, dropping the Suzuki GSX-R1000 and a customer BMW S1000RR deal.