Winston Ten Kate Honda rider Karl Muggeridge will start tomorrow’s 22 lap race from 2nd row on the grid here at round two of the World Superbike Championship. Muggas took 6th set the sixth fastest time in his first ever Superpole at his home round at Phillip Island in Australia.

With Japanese rider, Yuko Kagayama, setting the fastest time, fellow Aussie Steve Martin took second place and the German newcomer to Superbike Max Neukirchner surprised everybody with a third in front of this weekend’s favouriteTroy Corser.

In the morning qualifying session Muggas and his team tried out the new forks they prepared overnight and everything seems to be on a good way, all it needs is a bit of fine tuning and she should be all right. So they decided to save their Q tyre for the afternoon free practice to get a better feel and preparation for the Superpole, which must have paid out.

Muggas comments: “The Superpole lap was ok, it was just a matter to stay as smooth as possible. I got a bit excited at first, but once you are on the lap it’s just a normal qualifying lap. Although, I gotta say, it was great to have the whole track for myself and being able to just concentrate on going as fast as you can with no obstacles on the way. The fundamentals of the bike are working pretty well, the race settings are getting better and better after the small changes we made in the afternoon, so it should be fine. I’m hoping for a good start so I can get away with the front pack which always helps.”

Ronald Ten Kate: “Superpole is always an event in itself and I was very pleased with the way Karl handled his first, after a wet session at the first round in Qatar. He managed to improve his qualifying time by 0.8 second and moved up to the second row. Now we’ll concentrate on tomorrow’s two races for which I believe we have solved the puzzle of setting up the bike here. We’ll confirm a couple of things in warm-up tomorrow morning and I’m confident we can be up at the front in the races.”