Former British Superbike Champion Alex Lowes is surprised he topped the combined timesheets on day one of World Superbike testing at Phillip Island after a difficult day working through issues.

The Voltcom Suzuki man nicked the number one spot from Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea with only a couple of minutes left to run but has a third of a second lead over the Isle of Man, er, man ahead of the second day. Team-mate Randy De Puniet didn’t fare so well, suffering a massive highside just before luncheon.

“It’s been a difficult day and I’m quite surprised to be fastest. We’ve had some issues to work through but the guys have worked really hard and done a fantastic job. We’re approaching this year differently to last, as I almost ruined my season before the first race last year by crashing, but this year I’m determined not to do the same again – obviously mistakes can happen but we’re working well,” said Lowes.

“We’ve got some good information and feedback from today and I didn’t get frustrated when we had problems early on, I kept calm and went quite fast at the end. We’ve got a lot of work still to do – someone asked my expectations for Sunday, but I’m just looking forward to tomorrow morning, doing my best and then we’ll see what happens for the race weekend.

“Big credit to the guys and I really hope Randy is ok. Lez (my crew chief from last year) really helped this afternoon when we had some problems and that just shows the team we have this year. We might be one of the smaller factory set ups  but we are very strong and I think we are going to do a good job.”

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