Testing continued today at Phillip Island with near perfect conditions in the morning greeting riders before the sun really started getting serious around lunchtime which saw the track temperature creep above 50°C and thus times dropped off appreciably in the afternoon session.

The outright pacesetter today was Mat Mladin who recorded a lot of laps in the 1m32s bracket with an unofficial best of 1m32.2. Satisfied with how much they had to get through he called it a day early this afternoon. 

Troy Corser completed an entire race simulation before lunch and was more than 10 seconds quicker than the race simulation the team completed here last year. He was more than half a minute quicker over a full race distance that what they recorded during the race last year. Corser then had a lengthy lunch break before heading out again later in the day to put in a huge number of laps along with team-mate Yukio Kagayama.  The Suzuki men rode right up until the 1745 daily deadline.

Steve Martin quickly got straight down to steady 1m33s laptimes with an unofficial best of 1m33.4 to be third quickest. The high temperatures put a spoiler on Steve Martin's plans to conduct a full race simulation this afternoon so the South Australian plans to do two full race simulations tomorrow.

The Yamaha France boys were again hard at work all day but still do not look anywhere near the pace of the other men. Mid 1m34s were the best they could manage today but the most troubling part is that it took qualifying tyres for them to get that low while the other riders concentrated on race tyres.

New FPR rider Craig Jones continued to get acclimatised to his new machine and the fast Phillip Island layout and got a lot of laps in again today. He got down to 1m35s and continues to chip away here and there as he learns more about his new machine and the circuit. The Briton turned 21 on Monday.

Corser commented that a lot of bikes had a form of electronic traction control or 'anti-spin' last year while the Suzuki squad didn't.  He also said that they do have such a system this year but the tyres have really made a big step forward, commenting that the tyres are perhaps as much as 'half a second a lap quicker than last year'. 

Mladin worked his way through testing various 2006 kit parts on his GSX-R1000 along with undertaking a lot of tyre testing for Dunlop here today which will continue tomorrow morning.

Most teams are expected to stay on tomorrow for the fourth and final day of the test.

Unofficial Times - Day Three

1. Mladin 1m32.2

2. Corser 1m32.79

3. Martin 1m33.40

4. Kagayama 1m33.68

5. Abe 1m34.5

6. Gimbert 1m34.6

7. Nakatomi 1m35.1

8. Jones 1m35.6