Reigning double World Superbike champion
Troy Bayliss made a perfect start to the Valencia test on Sunday - the Australian enjoying a 0.4secs advantage over his rivals as he easily dipped under the official lap record.
The test is being attended by all of the leading teams and riders, with the notable exception of world championship leader
James Toseland and his Ten Kate Honda team, and saw third-in-the-points Bayliss fastest throughout the opening day; the factory 999 rider recording his best lap, of 1min 34.482secs, in the cooler morning session.
"I did a lot of laps today in the two sessions," declared Troy, who has taken one race win from four 2007 starts, "and this morning we did really good on the race tyre and I was quite happy. This afternoon it was quite windy and the track wasn't in such a good condition but we did a long-run anyway. The performance was better than the race last year but we weren't completely happy with it. We'll test a couple more tyres tomorrow to get a better idea, play with the setting a bit but overall the bike is working well. I did a 1min 33.7secs here last year and maybe I can go better than that tomorrow morning. We'll have to wait and see but for the moment everything's going well and it's a nice little freshen-up for
Donington."
Ducati Xerox team-mate
Lorenzo Lanzi was second-quickest in the morning session, but had a crash in the afternoon and dropped a place to Yamaha Motor Italia's
Troy Corser. Former double world champion Corser was 0.413secs slower than Bayliss with Lanzi a further 0.233secs adrift of the #21.
