WITH less than a week to the opening round of the 2010 British Superbike Championship the Verwood-based Worx Crescent Suzuki team are confident that they’re prepared and ready for action.

The Easter weekend sees the opening round of the championship taking place on the Indy circuit at Brands Hatch, with practice starting on Friday for Monday’s big season-opener.

An extra (fourth) day is added to the usual practice schedule to give the teams every opportunity to be fully ready when the Roll for Pole qualifying takes place on Easter Sunday afternoon.

However, the Worx Crescent Suzuki team are positive that they’ve overcome the minor issues that they experienced with their new electronic package in testing in Spain and are already 100 per cent ready to go.

Team manager Jack Valentine said: “The last days before the start of the season are always hectic. But this year we’re well prepared. The GSX-R1000 hasn’t changed markedly from last season, but we have had to work hard to establish good base settings for our new suspension package from Ohlins and new electronic engine management system from Motec.

“Although we experienced some issues while winter testing in Spain these were overcome and the test times showed that we again, for 2010, have a highly competitive machine. That really is very much due to the team, the mechanics, as they’ve worked really hard in demanding conditions – rain and snow – and delivered us a bike that’s so good.

“Last week we took in two days of testing at Cadwell Park with Tommy Hill [pictured] and we were happy to find that the base settings from Spain transferred well to a British track and the solutions that we applied to our earlier issues have also proved lasting. The bike is exactly how we want it to start the season.”

The team this year is substantially bigger than last year, now a two-rider team, which means two technical crews, but with the new one-bike-per-rider rule for the championship the quantity of hardware virtually stays the same.

For their part the riders are exceptionally busy. Tommy Hill has been much in demand for radio and general media interviews as he’s seen as the local man to the Brands Hatch venue and so finds himself acting as an ambassador for the championship as well as for Suzuki at this time.

Yukio Kagayama meanwhile is busy settling in his young family into a new apartment in west London after help from the British embassy in Japan for speedy approval of immigration requirements.

The team will be hoping for a similar start to that they saw at Brands Hatch last season when Sylvain Guintoli took pole position and a race win in his first outing in BSB.