World SuperSport - Valencia Tests- Day 2
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Castrol Honda's Chris Vermeulen was pleased with his first visit to the Valencia circuit in Spain, for the pre-season World Supersport championship test session on Sunday and Monday.
After two days at the track - in changing weather conditions - the 18-year-old Australian believes he has made good progress in the development of the new CBR600F Sport machine. "I've ended the session 0.6s off the third fastest time and I'm reasonably happy with that," Vermeulen admitted. "But we're still searching for perfection on the machine. Every time we make progress in one area it seems to upset another area of the machine set-up and create a new problem for us to attack. "I didn't try the soft compound Michelin tyre I'll use for qualifying this year so I'm happy with my lap time on race tyres and looking forward to coming back here in three weeks for the first round of the championship." Vermeulen and the Castrol Honda Supersport team will leave Valencia on Monday evening bound for another Spanish circuit, Cartagena, for a further two-day test session. Vermeulen's fellow CBR600F Sport Honda rider Pere Riba set the fastest time of the test, 1.6 seconds inside the lap record and 1.2 seconds faster than last year's pole position time at the Spanish venue. Kawasaki rider Iain MacPherson began to turn up the heat while recovering from a thumb injury. The Valencia race-lap record holder knocked nearly a second off his previous day's best within the ultra-competitive Supersport field. His best time of 1:40.682 placed him 17th overall at the end of the test. Australian Andrew Pitt also improved his times from the previous day, finishing in the 22nd timeslot. The Kawasaki Racing team will return to the Valencia circuit in only three weeks time for the start of the 2001 championship, which begins March 11. Final Valencia World Supersport qualifying times: |