Image: Alex Gobert (Foremost Media).

Reigning Australian Superbike champion Troy Herfoss will roll out Crankt Protein Honda Racing’s brand new 2017 CBR1000RR SP2 during opening practice at Hidden Valley this afternoon, eager to get to work with the latest Fireblade.

Herfoss has been heroic on-board the previous model SP to win championships in 2015 and 2016, however the arrival of Honda’s updated Fireblade is one of the most significant steps of his career with the team.

A series of demonstration laps at last month’s Darwin Triple Crown Supercars event enabled the ever-versatile 30-year-old to get a feel for the resurfaced 2.87km layout in the Top End, but the process of introducing the SP2 during practice today and tomorrow will be vital in his quest for another title.

“For sure, the lap-times will be a lot faster and it feels really smooth from what we experienced at the Supercars,” Herfoss told CycleOnline.com.au. “It’s really hot up here at the moment and we haven’t done a lot of riding in the past month or two, so it’s just about doing laps today and being at a reasonable pace by Friday afternoon. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and by Saturday it’s a regular weekend for us.

“We’ll learn a lot today on the bike because I haven’t done any laps on it at speed – Winton was litterally just a shakedown. It’s all a bit unknown at the moment, but it’d be nice to be on track and have everything normal come the weekend. It’s really exciting though, we’ve been waiting a long time for this and there’s a lot of anticipation, but it’s hard to get too excited because it’s midway through the season, we’re close in the championship and I don’t want to jeapordise that.

“We need to keep focused on getting the most out of the bike, but it’s definitely nice to think about the top-speed of the bike and also the electronics. The geometry of the bike that we are running is the same, so we can go out with a good base-setting. It would have been nice to do our first race with the SP2 at a track we’ve got a lot of experience at, but that’s fine and it could work in our favour that not everybody has tested here. We’re just trying to take it one step at a time at the moment, but it’s all looking pretty positive.”

Round four of the Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK) presented by Motul Pirelli will feature a special extended practice day today at Hidden Valley, which will vastly assist Herfoss and teammate Bryan Staring in getting up to speed prior to Saturday’s qualifying sessions.