round 11 - Imola, Italy
Qualifying practice - 30 September 2005

VERMEULEN TAKES RECENT FORM TO IMOLA

Chris Vermeulen finished today's opening qualifying session for Sunday's
eleventh round World Superbike championship event at Imola, Italy in second
place behind series leader Troy Corser. Vermeulen continued his recent
methodical qualifying routine and opted to run for the hour-long session without
a qualifying tyre.

His Winston Ten Kate Honda team-mate, Karl Muggeridge, ended the session in
ninth place but remains confident of further improvement tomorrow in preparation
for Sunday's two 21-lap races at the historic Enzo e Dino Ferrari circuit in
northern Italy.

Ronald ten Kate - team manager:

"That was a pretty good start to the weekend and we just spent this afternoon
constantly improving the bike after the wet free practice session this morning.
We still have some things to try with different tyre options tomorrow, when
we'll also maybe try a qualifier with Chris. Karl still has some set-up issues
to resolve but, like at all the circuits this year, he's still adapting to the
Honda CBR1000RR. We'll compare data and the different set-ups of the riders this
evening and see what improvements we can make to continue in the direction we've
found today."

Chris Vermeulen - second fastest, 1m49.280s

"I'm still playing around with getting a lot more feeling from the front. Just
in the last four races, I've found that it's really important. We only tried two
rears and two fronts in that session but that feeling is definitely coming. I
didn't feel that comfortable out there but the lap times were pretty quick - the
quickest I've ever been here. I think that shows just how much we've improved
the bike recently and that there's a lot of potential still there. I'm also
still familiarising myself with the circuit after the wet session this morning
so definitely more to come tomorrow."

Karl Muggeridge - ninth fastest, 1m50.537s

"I haven't got any real specific problems here, just learning my way round on
the Superbike; and the fact that this morning's free practice was wet didn't
help any. But we found a much better front tyre right at the end of this
afternoon's session so we'll start on that tomorrow morning. We'll look at
everything tonight and make some more changes but the important thing is to do
some more laps. Everything's OK and it's going in the right direction so I'm
pretty happy with the progress we've made today."