Image: Keith Muir.

Former Australian Superbike Champion (ASBK) Bryan Staring made the most of yesterday’s dry track-time at the Phillip Island ASBK test, lapping within 0.2s of defending champion teammate Troy Hefoss.

Staring, who captured the title in 2010 before embarking on an international career, will make a high-profile return to the ASBK in 2017 with Crankt Protein Honda Racing on board the championship-winning CBR1000RR SP.

The 29-year-old made his first laps with Honda during a recent Wakefield Park shakedown, however the Phillip Island test on Monday in Victoria marked his first official appearance with the Paul Free-led organisation.

While Honda will start the season with last year’s Fireblade as they await delivery of the brand new 2017 model, Staring is benefiting from the development already gone into the current bike and posted a 1m34.065s laptime despite rain ruining two of the four sessions. That placed him seventh on the timesheets, 0.868s from pace-setter, Yamaha privateer Michael Blair.

“The environment is exactly what you’d expect from a team that’s had so much success,” Staring told CycleOnline.com.au. “Everyone has such a good attitude and work ethic and it shows in what they can put together for race day. Especially in my side of the garage, I’ve really enjoyed working with Adrian.

“The bike is fantastic and I’m really, really happy with it. Obviously the team has had so much time to develop it and they have so much experience, so I haven’t changed too much around. If the whole day we were at Phillip Island, we only got two dry sessions – I got up to speed pretty quickly and it’s all been positive.

“It’s unfortunate that we didn’t have as much dry time as we would have liked, because we were still going forward. We were kind of forced to do a long run, because we had no time, so that was the focus and overall we did absolutely everything we could with every minute of track time that we had.

“Although I wasn’t quite as close to the front as what I would have liked to have been, given the circumstances and how much time our competition has spent at the track in the last weeks, I think it was a pretty positive test. That test won’t mean anything come race day, so it’s good that we’ve made a positive start – the whole team’s really motivated.”

Staring’s return to the domestic championship is one of the major storylines ahead of Phillip Island’s opening round alongside the World Superbikes on 24-26 February, after spending a full six seasons racing overseas – including a year in MotoGP with Gresini Racing during 2013.