Haydon boost for FPR.

Foggy Petronas Racing's chief engineer, Steve Thompson, took heart from the performance of James Haydon after wet weather brought a frustrating end to the second day of the official World Superbike winter test at Valencia.

The English rider shaved more than a second off his best time of Friday, with Thompson keen to point out the significance of the progress despite rain washing out the afternoon's track time.

"James has turned it up a gear and getting closer to Troy's times, which is good for competition in the team, as well as for morale within the team - and for James," he said, "I was very pleased again today as we are mixing it with established teams and established riders. Our bike is only one year old, whereas Ducati is as old as me - and I'm bloomin' old! We are really showing the potential we can achieve."

Given the greasy nature of the track, and with more rain forecast for tomorrow, it was decided not to risk any wet weather testing today. But, in the cool conditions of the morning, Haydon moved to within 0.7secs of Corser, who climbed up the standings with a lap time of 1min 36.4secs when the track surface was driest.

"We still have a lot of work to do but we are really coming on and another second would put me on the front row," Haydon admitted, "We are working very hard to find a rear tyre that could achieve that."

His team-mate was among the most frustrated as anyone with the change in conditions, ruing the loss of track time just as he was getting into his groove.

"It was obviously disappointing to lose a couple of hours track time, when I wanted to do more work on the gearing, but it was pleasing to go faster today and I know that there is more to come," Corser concluded.