After being forced to sit out last weekend's Valencia round due to a back injury, Winston Ten Kate Honda's
Karl Muggeridge will return in a more aerodynamic form at Monza on May 7 - as the accident has left him 4mm shorter!
"Karl will be back with us at Monza - which is of course good," team manager Ronald Ten Kate told
Crash.net Radio. "He's had quite a bad time with the injury from the Valencia test, but that's healed up now - although he's shrunk four millimetres due to the impact on his spine! Let's just say it's prepared him very well for the high speeds at Monza because his aerodynamics will now be better than before!"
Muggeridge sustained the injury under unusual circumstances, falling heavily from his CBR1000RR while on an in-lap.
"It was towards the end of the test; we were all putting qualifying tyres on and Karl hates it when other people are in the middle of the track just cruising around," explained Ten Kate. "So when he was on his in-lap, he took a look around to make sure that he wasn't in somebody else's way - but at the same time he must have touched the throttle a bit and he was just launched off the bike. He said the next thing he knew, he didn't know what was up and what was down - and then he hit the ground pretty bad."
Giovanni Bussei replaced Muggeridge at Valencia, finishing 18th and 20th, while Ten Kate's regular rider,
James Toseland, finished ninth and 11th after a difficult weekend for all the Honda riders.
