Second Day of Castrol Honda's Kyalami Test

"We more or less got the machine how we wanted it yesterday then set abouttesting some tires today," said the 33-year-old Japanese rider. "I wasn¹ttoo bothered about the time but it¹s always nice to be somewhere near therace pace..."

"We made a couple of changes to the front forks this morning then settleddown to some tyre testing this afternoon."

Okada has completed 140 laps of the track during the opening two days of thefour-day Michelin tire test, recording a best lap on Thursday afternoon of1:43.2.

World champion Colin Edwards took on some major changes to the Castrol VTRand the American is confident of further improving the 2000 title-winningmachine.

He said, "It¹s the Kyalami circuit that¹s forced us to look at the machineset-up. Unlike Phillip Island in December where we ended up with a goodsetting, Kyalami has a lot of slow, bumpy corners and combating that is thearea of set-up we are concentrating on."

"I¹ve still to try any of the new Michelin tires although I was heading forthat this afternoon until the rain came."

Edwards recorded a best lap of 1:43.7, marginally slower than his openingday fastest lap of 1:43.3.

Castrol Honda¹s Chris Vermeulen continued his progress on the new CBR600FSport machine, improving his best lap of Wednesday¹s opening action by 0.8 seconds.

Vermeulen said, "Michelin gave us a load of tyres to try and everything'sgoing fine. I tried both machines today, the number one and the spare, wegot the suspension right and both engines feel fast. I seem to have done alot of laps today but I¹m very happy with our progress."

Vermeulen¹s best lap on Thursday, of 1:48.0, is 0.3 seconds faster than the laprecord, set in 1999 during the South African World Supersport round.