MUGGAS 9^TH ON DAY

Winston Ten Kate Honda's Karl Muggeridge finished the today's provisional qualifying session on the 9^th position at round 11 of the Superbike World Championship here at Imola in Italy.

Muggas who likes the Enzo e Dino Ferrari circuit from his experience with the Supersport machine used today's sessions to find his way around the 4,9 km track on the CBR 1000.

Muggas hasn't tried too many different settings yet, as he first wanted to make sure he is confident with the track and the breaking markers before changing the bike settings up side down.

Muggas comments: "I'm still finding my way around the track; I'm not a 100% yet with the breaking, could have really done without the rain in the morning. At the end we tried a different front tyre which improved the bike a little bit. But I think we are still too hard at the rear, it's spinning a lot, for sure we can improve the bike a lot, and I'm confident that we will close the gap tomorrow."

Ronald ten Kate - team manager:"That was a pretty good start to the weekend and we just spent this afternoon constantly improving the bike after the wet free practice session this morning. Karl still has some set-up issues to resolve but, like at all the circuits this year, he's still adapting to the Honda CBR1000RR. We'll compare data and the different set-ups of the riders this evening and see what improvements we can make to continue in the direction we've found today."

MUGGAS ON 3^RD ROW

2^nd Qualifying
Winston Ten Kate rider Karl Muggeridge finished this mornings qualifying session in 14^th position and is hoping for some drastical improvement before the Superpole lap in the afternoon.

Muggas admits that it took him a while to get used to the breaking on the Superbike here at Imola coming over the hills into the blind corners, but also isn't very happy with the handling of the bike, which feels very hard and is difficult to steer around the corners.

Karl comments: "We've been struggling all weekend so far, my breaking has improved but now as I was getting faster I noticed that the CBR isn't handling at all to my likings. I just can't turn it around those corners, at the end was really lucky I made it into Superpole. We got a lot to think about and definitely to change for the afternoon; it won't be just some small adjustments. But I'm confident that my boys will find a solution and hey we haven't really got anything to loose, it only can get better."

Superpole:
Winston Ten Kate Honda's Karl Muggeridge took 10th place after a scary Superpole lap this afternoon and will start tomorrow's race from the 3^rd row of the grid. Muggas team-mate Vermeulen took pole position with a new best lap time of 1'48.075 and beat Colin Edward's record from 2002 by nearly 0.3 seconds.

Muggas Superpole lap wasn't of the finest, but he's happy with the improvements they made this afternoon and is hoping to find some more for tomorrow's morning warm-up.

Muggas comments: "Not a very lucky weekend so far, but it can only get better! I made a mistake on the first section of the track and run in the dirt which cost me about two tenths, then I really tried hard to make that up and had a pretty good run in the middle section, it was the fastest I've been through there all weekend, so it wasn't looking too bad at that point. But then I got down the hill to the last corners, went for the brakes and just to increase my heartbeat a little more the brake lever came all the way back to the handle bar. I thought I was going to land in the buildings. but I made it around, however the time wasn't looking so promising anymore after that. We definitely improved the bike this afternoon a fair bit, but still got some work to do, especially to improve the rear grip. Otherwise, it seems like I'm finally getting the grip of the track. I'm sure that for a change we should be able to improve our position in the race from where we starting."

Technical Problems and rain

Race 1:
Winston Ten Kate Honda rider, Karl Muggeridge suffered further misfortune with clutch failure on the opening lap, which forced him to retire from the 21 lap race just after two laps at round 11 of the World Superbike Championship here at Imola

Muggas got a reasonable start from the grid and crossed the line after lap one in 6^th position, starting from his 10^th grip place. Muggeridge had a strong feeling about the race and a good finishing position, but it wasn't meant to be.

Ronald ten Kate - team manager:
"For Karl it was just more bad luck because his clutch probably went as he got away from the line, meaning his race was over before it had really begun."

 Karl Muggeridge:
"You can probably imagine that I'm pretty disappointed. We made progress yesterday and changed a few little things for the better this morning. I got a reasonable start and felt good on that first lap. The bike was awesome and then . well, that was it. I could do with a bit of luck this afternoon, for sure."

Race 2:
The second race here at Imola at round 11 round of the World Superbike Championship didn't bring any more luck for the Winston Ten Kate squad and Muggeridge. In fact he didn't even get a chance to start the race, as some rider decided after the sighting and warm-up lap that it is too dangerous to race with all the water on the track.

The race direction than decided to delay the start for 30 minutes, hoping the rain would stop and the water could be swept away. But the weather didn't show its friendly face and it kept poring down. After a track inspection with the pace car the decision was taken to cancel race two which mad Troy Corser to the new 2005 Superbike World Champion, as Chris Vermeulen didn't get a chance to fight back some more important points.

Of course this isn't a happy weekend for the Winston Ten Kate team after getting already two injured Supersport riders in the practice session, now the finally also lost out on the Superbike Championship for sure. However, it's clear for everyone that safety goes first.

Karl Muggeridge comments: "I would have loved to do that second race, especially after I only did a couple of laps in race one. But I gotta say the warm-up lap was pretty scary, there was like a river sitting on the race line and I could have crashed a few times just in that lap and we weren't even going fast. Also it was impossible to see behind the others where to brake and where to go, even though there were only about four guys in front of me, imagine when the whole field is together. If the race direction decided to go for it, I would have raced, but it wasn't meant to be. I feel sorry for Chris to loose out on getting some points back on Troy like that, but there's nothing we can do about that."