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Early encouragement for Kiwi superbike ace Aaron Slight at the first official warmup for his new season.
Slight\'s brand new V-twin bike has topped the leaderboard in day one of world superbike testing at Phillip Island, Australia.
Slight\'s Castrol Honda teammate Colin Edwards (USA) set fastest lap time, ahead of Japanese-based Honda rider Shinichi Itoh who flew in just for the tests but will not contest the championship this year.
A sole Kawasaki managed third quickest with expat Kiwi Slight fourth as he worked his way through tyre and suspension combinations.
\"It\'s very early days yet but this is a most encouraging debut for the Honda,\" said the Masterton-born veteran racer.
\"I\'m not bothering too much with fast lap times, just concentrating on getting the bike set up,\" he said of the powerful new 1000cc VTR.
\"It\'s great having the VTR and I know there\'s so much more to come from the machine,\" Slight explained. \"Like Colin, I\'ve been trying a lot of new tyres and trying to find better settings on the machine at the same time.\"
Edwards, old pal and now staunch rival of Slight, was happy with his opening show on the machine.
\"It\'s been a great opening day of these tests for me,\" said Edwards.
\"Michelin have given us a lot of new tyres to test and some have worked really well. There\'s two more days to go but I\'m confident I can go quicker.\"
Fifth fastest on Sunday was Italian Suzuki rider Pier-Francesco Chili while Yamaha\'s Wataru Yoshikawa recorded the sixth fastest time ahead of defending World Superbike champion Carl Fogarty on his Ducati.
World superbike wild boy Noriyuki Haga (Japan) was eighth quickest on a Yamaha.
While the performance of a non-championship Japanese rider on the top Kawasaki was pleasing, team bosses had frowns after leading world supers contestant Akira Yanagawa (Japan) took the ninth best time before crashing, sustaining a suspected broken ankle.
Yanagawa\'s Spanish team-mate Gregorio Lavilla was tenth fastest.
Sunday times: 1 Colin Edwards, USA (Castrol Honda) 1m 33.894s, 2 Shinichi Itoh, Japan (Honda) 1m 34.530s, 3 Hitoyasu Izutsu, Japan (Kawasaki) 1m 34.630s, 4 Aaron Slight, New Zealand (Castrol Honda) 1m 34.873s, 5 Pier-Francesco Chili, Italy (Suzuki) 1m 35.065s, 6 Wataru Yoshikawa, Japan (Yamaha) 1m 35.103s, 7 Carl Fogarty, GB (Ducati) 1m 35.109s, 8 Noriyuki Haga, Japan (Yamaha) 1m 35.327s, 9 Akira Yanagawa, Japan (Kawasaki) 1m 35.366s, 10 Gregorio Lavilla, Spain (Kawasaki) 1m 35.703s.
