World Supersport debutant Kyle Smith has completed his first test on the Pata Honda World Supersport CBR600RR machine and is now looking forward to this weekend’s opening round at Phillip Island in Australia.

The 23-year-old British rider stepped up to world championship competition after competing in last season’s European Superstock 1000 series and has never ridden at the iconic 4.445km Phillip Island circuit.

However, Smith is satisfied with his first outings with his new team and relishing the opportunity of riding the CBR600RR that won last season’s World Supersport championship in the hands of Dutch rider Michael van der Mark.

Kyle Smith - best time 1m34.482s

Yeah, I’m happy with this test. We progressed a lot yesterday and today and the lap time dropped, which is good. Obviously, you always want more and towards the end of today’s session we tried a bunch of stuff with the bike but didn’t manage to make the little step forward that we wanted. I’d like to be a couple of tenths faster to be a little higher but I’m happy with the progression we’ve made. I think we can be there on Friday but we’ve learned an awful lot these last two days. It’s a new bike and a new track for me, but I think I can be faster again on Friday. There’ll definitely be a lot more of an attack mentality for the race weekend!

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator

It’s been our first outing with our new rider, Kyle, and it’s also his first time here at Phillip Island and on our CBR machine. There is an awful lot to learn of course, and he made good progress yesterday. This morning he improved his time by more than a second over yesterday. We tried a few things but kept the bike quite close to the base with which we won last year and it seems to be the correct base to work from. That’s positive because we can use all the data for the rest of this season. Kyle is a good guy to work with – he’s really relaxed and we’re looking forward to our first race weekend with him.