Winston Ten Kate rider Karl Muggeridge set the fifth fastest time in the opening qualifying session of round two of the World Superbike Championship here at Phillip Island in Australia.

Muggas who is enjoying the home round and the great weather so far here at Phillip Island, improved his lap times continuously as the day went on and he got the bike knowing better around this high speed and technical track.

At the end of the morning session the Winston Ten Kate Squad tried a different fork setting, which seemed to go around the corners better, but didn’t feel as nice as the other one. So in the afternoon after trying both settings on different tyres, they came to the conclusion that they need to work a bit harder on the front suspension and find something in between the two forks to get a better feed back.

Karl comments: “My first lap here on a Superbike this morning was really funny! I came down the start-finish straight thinking: ‘When is this thing going to stop accelerating?’ It was kind of mad and makes the 600 feel like you could make a cup of tea going down the straight. The power lifts the front wheel as you go over the crest and then the wind wants to send it sideways so it’s kind of interesting! The bike’s great, the brakes are working quite well, we just need to get the front suspension dialled in a bit better. We worked on two different forks today, of which one feels nice but doesn’t go around the corner that well where as the other one turns really well but I don’t like the feel of it. So we basically have to find a combination of the two of them for tomorrow.”

Team Manager Ronald Ten Kate is extremely happy with the steps forward they made today, also he would have liked the times to be a bit closer to provisional pole position he’s aware that his two riders didn’t had a chance to test here during the winter season unlike some other teams.