Cycle News Staff | March 3, 2011
John Hopkins had his first outing on the Samsung Crescent Racing Suzuki GSX-R1000 that he will campaign in this year’s British Superbike Series in a test session at the Cartagena track in Spain.”It has been a really good day for me and the guys; we had good weather as the rain held off and I got some good laps in,” Hopkins said on the official British Superbike Series website.
“I was just getting the feel for the new bike and the positioning. We didn’t change anything mechanically today, I just wanted to get the feel having not ridden anything other than a motocross bike since the end of last year. I did want to stick my leg out a few times on the first laps and get a bit of a slide on, but I soon got that out of my system.”In the second session it was all coming together and I felt much better and more comfortable on the bike. I did have one moment when I out braked myself into turn one and just ran on into the gravel so hopefully that’s that out of the way for a while now. Tomorrow I am looking forward to getting back out and we can really start to work on some bits with the bike and try some different parts.”We don’t want to try and fix problems that aren’t there so we have a bit of a plan for the morning and we are going to try a new swingarm and do some work with the front forks, but it has been a great day. The guys are all great and I can’t wait for more tomorrow.”
