Hopper at home on Tyco Suzuki

Former MotoGP podium finisher John Hopkins says that he feels at home already on the Tyco Suzuki machine he will compete in the 2014 MCE British Superbike championship on, with the similarities to his former crescent Suzuki helping him to adapt to the new machine.

“We took my base setting from what it was on the Crescent bike and haven’t really changed it at all from that! Suzuki themselves and some partners like Yoshimura have made some improvements, and I noticed them right away, but it’s still fairly similar to what I was used to.”

“It has been a really good test for me and the time at Cartagena with the team has been very positive. The whole purpose of this first test was to get comfortable back on a race bike again and get myself back up to speed and we have done just that. We didn’t make too many changes and just made a few small adjustments and it gave me the time to get back up to speed and as we progress the lap times will improve and we will go to the next level.”

“The final day was windy but we didn’t plan on doing too much more because we were happy with what we had done; we had planned to do some sessions this morning and do the afternoon as it came because my muscles were starting to feel a bit sore as it has been the first time I have ridden a Superbike in over a year. The wind picked up though and many of us decided to end the day early.”

“Now that we have had some good days on track we can regroup as a team and get ready for our next test. I have really enjoyed being back out on the Suzuki and I just want to do as many laps as we can before the start of the season. As far as looking at how the test at Cartagena has gone I am really happy. We were not too far off and the pace was better than I had expected. I know that now we can progress a lot further and as I get more into race mode we will be even faster.”

For full coverage from the four-day Cartagena see this Wednesday 12th March’s Motorcycle News.