Vermeulen: “Now it feels like my bike”

After completing a two day test at Almeria this afternoon, Chris Vermeulen will leave the Spanish track happy and remains satisfied that he’s making good progress developing the factory Kawasaki ZX-10R that he’ll campaign in WSB 2010.

Along with team-mate Tom Sykes, Vermeulen got to test a host of new parts and settings and revealed that he now feels comfortable on the bike.

“The test has gone well, it was another circuit I hadn’t been to so I had to learn the track first and with it being December we only had limited track time. But it’s starting to feel like my bike and I’m comfortable. I can understand what it’s doing and understand how it behaves with the changes we’re making.”

Some of those changes included dialling in new Magneti Marelli electronics, which were developed by Kawasaki in MotoGP.

“We’ve improved the suspension and we’ve got it working how I like to ride the bike. We’ve also done a lot of work with the new electronics. It’s basically an updated version from 2009, but the key thing is we’ve got technicians from the MotoGP team working on it.”

The Kawasaki Superbike team will now head to their final test in Jerez, Spain next week where they will continue ongoing development work.

“I’m looking forward to riding the bike at a Jerez because I know it well and it will help with my overall understanding. The last two tracks I’ve ridden on have been new to me and that always makes development harder.”