Image: Russell Colvin.

A troubled two days of testing at The Bend Motorsport Park finally saw Kawasaki BCperformance’s Bryan Staring make headway on Wednesday afternoon, narrowly avoiding disaster on debut at the brand new South Australian venue.

Staring was well down the order during the opening day and again in the opening stages of day two, however late changes saw the Western Australian climb the order to seventh position in the closing stages.

Phillip Island winner Staring, top of the few Dunlop-shod riders in the field, posted a best lap of 1m55.441s following the 10 timed practice sessions, however it was still 1.4s from the benchmark set by Yamaha Racing Team’s Wayne Maxwell on Pirelli tyres. Staring knows they will need to extract more from the package if he is to seriously challenge for the crown in 2018.

“It was a bit strange really, it took us a long time to figure out what the bike and tyre combination needed,” Staring told CycleOnline.com.au. “We got a bit of strange information to start with, which led us on a path that wasn’t correct. More to the point, it wasn’t until we tested something that we tried earlier that we really found our direction.

“At the moment, I’m just thankful we did find our direction. It wasn’t until the second-last session that we finally did more than a few laps in a row – from there onwards, we really quickly got back up to speed. Overall, I’d still say it was a positive test, but only just.”

After crashing out of the second encounter at Wakefield Park last month, initial points leader Staring now sits sixth in the 2018 Yamaha Motor Finance Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), which will resume with round three at Tailem Bend between 19-22 April.