The fourth round of the 2010 Hannspree World Superbike Championship heads to the iconic Circuit van Drenthe at Assen next weekend with the Kawasaki Racing Team aiming for better fortunes. Following a crash at the opening round at Phillip Island in late February, Australian Chris Vermeulen hopes to have recovered sufficiently from his knee injuries to return at the Dutch circuit for the Paul Bird Motorsport Team whereby he’ll join Yorkshireman Tom Sykes on the factory Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10Rs. Sykes has scored points in five of the six races to date and gave a strong showing last time out at Valencia so will be hoping to build on those performances for the Penrith-based team. Chris Vermeulen: “My knee is improving every day since I had keyhole surgery over a week ago and I have a good feeling in most of its range. The difficult part now is getting enough bend but also strength and stability in my knee to race at Assen because I don’t want to turn up to just ride around. I am getting physiotherapy every day and it’s still a week until I need to be on the bike so I am optimistic that in that time it will have improved even more by then. I really enjoy racing at Assen and have had successful results there in both Superbikes and in MotoGP, I also get a lot of support there because of my Dutch heritage. I therefore hope that I can put on a good show and be fit enough to compete and join the team once again.” Tom Sykes: “Valencia was a tough race for us but I feel that we can take a lot of positives from those races. We worked hard all weekend on chassis issues and finally it came together on Sunday morning and we produced some good consistent lap times in the race. Looking ahead to Assen I hope we can continue with the progress we have made over the past few races and put in solid on-track performances throughout the weekend. The Assen circuit hasn’t always been so kind to the ZX-10R but we’re due some good fortune and with Chris coming back, we hope that this race we’ll be able to showcase the hard work that both myself and the team are putting in behind the scenes.”