Australian Jason O'Halloran has returned to testing with his HM Plant Honda team ahead of the opening round of the British Superbike Championship on April 22nd.
The team got down to work on the first of a two day test at their home circuit of Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire with all three riders, O'Halloran, who wil compete in the Superstock Championship, defending BSB Champion Ryuichi Kiyonari and Shane Byrne all completing 70 laps of the famed circuit.
"I am feeling happy with how today went. I love Cadwell Park and to test on a UK circuit that we will race on feels great," Jason said.
"We can really compare here what we need to achieve. We have still been working away on the rear of the Superstock Fireblade to try and improve the grip on the exit of the corners, before we went for a radical change to the shock in the afternoon. Tomorrow we plan to work on the front end, but I am feeling good as we have been to three different tracks and we haven't been a million miles away at any of them so things are looking great."
Ryuichi Kiyonari had a good day on the track as prperations for his title defence draw closer.
"We had a very good day on track; the weather was good so we could do lots of laps," Kiyonari saod. "The HM Plant Honda Fireblade is already feeling better than before, as the team has been working hard since we came back from Spain. We started this morning completely different to when we were in Spain and each session we made improvements to the engine settings and had no problems. Tomorrow we will do some more work on the chassis but I am happy with the times and we have had a good first day."
Shakey Byrne added, "It has been a pretty productive day, we did about 75 laps and it was great to be back on a UK circuit as it has been three years since I last rode here. I feel like we have got a lot of the 'donkey' work out of the way in terms of the basics and now tomorrow we can concentrate more on changes to the Fireblade. We can crack on tomorrow; today we were fast but tomorrow we want to be really fast. There is definitely lots more still to come."
Team Manager, Havier Beltran concluded: "It's been a very productive day all-round for all three riders. We have had a day of quality track time, with all three completing over 70 laps each and we had good conditions. We have a series of items we want to test here and already we have made good progress so we now look forward to tomorrow."
