Aprilia's Ben Attard enjoyed a consistent weekend in WA as he develops the i-Style Natural Aprilia RSV4.

i-Style Natural Aprilia Racing Team rider Ben Attard remains in third position in the 2011 ASBK following a strong ride in the Trading Post Perth Challenge, the first of three combined rounds in 2011 with the V8 Supercars.

Attard qualified on the second row then finished with 7-6 results for the weekend as he continues to gel with new team technical director Warren Willing.

Ben’s consistent performance’s over the two races resulted in sixth place for the round, more importantly maintaining third place in the ASBK championship standings.

“The first race wasn’t our best that’s for sure” reflected Attard. “We didn’t really have the quite the right setup – a lack of setup time – we just didn’t gather enough data. After the race I could see where I was losing it to the other guys.

“Warren’s a genius and he’s been able to sort that out, and we were able to lap consistently over 0.6 of a second quicker and that put us right were we needed to be. The bike was there to today, it just took us a few laps to get going.

“I got a great start in the second race and was pretty aggressive into turn one, you have to be as there are just so many good riders out there on good bikes, we’ve come a long way since yesterday – I just wish we were there on Friday.”

Willing was also pleased with the positive steps made during the weekend.

“Each step was positive,” he commented. “But it was hard as each time you went out the track it was a completely different temperature and time of the day. We really made progress after the data we gathered in yesterday’s race where Ben was struggling for grip all through and finished twelve seconds behind.

“Based on that feedback we were able to put a setting in this morning for warm up. Again, it’s hard to evaluate as the track temperature was very cold and we had to use yesterday’s race tyre, and we raced on the hard tyre so that wasn’t really suitable for this morning, but it did seem better.

“In the race it proved to be better and we improved the race time by about nine seconds, it was just a day late.”

Round five of the 2011 ASBK will be held at Brisbane’s Queensland Raceway, the teams’ home circuit, over the weekend 3-5 June.