HM Plant Honda duo focus on tuning bikes

Ryuichi Kiyonari and Shane Byrne say they will begin to work on lowering their lap times having gotten 'a lot of the donkey work' out of the way during pre-season testing thus far.

The pair joined several of their rivals on track during a test at Cadwell Park to continue improving the 2010 British Superbike title-winning Honda CBR1000RR, having focused mostly on set-up work up to this point.

Indeed, reigning champion Kiyonari insists the bike has come a long way since Spain, when it was out paced by Relentless Suzuki, Samsung Crescent Suzuki and Swan Yamaha.

"We had a very good day on track; the weather was good so we could do lots of laps. 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. We will do some more work on the chassis but I am happy with the times and we have had a good first day."

Byrne, meanwhile, was riding on a non-world championship affiliated UK circuit for the first time in three years as he also worked on acquainting himself with the four-cylinder machine.

"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 we can concentrate more on changes to the Fireblade. We can crack on now. We were fast [on day one] but [on day two] we want to be really fast. There is definitely lots more still to come."