Steve Martin and the DFX Honda World Superbike squad made further testing progress during the last three days at the team’s second winter test at Valencia. With the start of the 2007 World Superbike season just six weeks away, Steve spent the three days concentrating on progressing the set up of his Honda CBR1000 in order to find his optimum base setting to take forward into the racing season. Steve said, “We made good initial progress at our first test back in November so we didn’t have to start from scratch this time, which helped us get straight into testing. “We turned the bike inside out again working on all areas including evaluation of some new parts such as the front forks, but also tested different rear suspension links, fork heights, clutch settings and gearing just to name a few, and on the final day I was feeling pretty happy with where we got to and I’m a lot more confident on the bike.” “Some new parts, including the new 2007 spec rear shock and the new engine didn’t arrive in time for this test, but I’ve been assured by Ohlins and the team that these will be with us in time for the start of the season.” Despite being a privateer team and therefore unable to benefit from testing with Pirelli’s latest specification tyres, Steve was still able to achieve a lap time of 1:36.0, one second quicker than at the November test, on old specification tyres and in cold conditions. “The conditions were really cold and not ideal for testing, especially for tyres, so to come away with the lap time that I did after only my second test on the Honda was encouraging,” continued Steve. “The team is also gelling together really well and it was funny to hear my crew chief, Baz, who I’ve worked with for the last two years, starting to throw in the odd word of Italian into his English sentences!” Steve now returns to Australia where he will be concentrating on fine tuning his fitness in preparation for one further pre season test at Valencia in February, before the opening race of the season at Qatar on 24 February.