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Next Gen Motorsport’s Glenn Allerton has completed day one of the Asia Road Racing Championship (ARRC) test at Chang International Circuit in Thailand, as the series introduces a Superbike category for the first time.

The BMW squad revealed its intentions last month to potentially enter the series alongside its commitments in the YMF Australian Superbike Championship (ASBK), with this week’s tyre test its first step towards making it happen.

Adapting to the Dunlop control tyre and Buriram venue, Allerton wound up seventh on the timesheets on the opening day after recording 68 laps.

“The heavy braking areas are really big and were causing us some dramas today,” Allerton admitted. “It’s not the end of the world. The team and I will sit down tonight and work on our brake set-up and get the bike to work a little bit better in the big braking areas and accelerate out of slow corners. Once we get that sorted I believe we will be better off.

“It was very interesting to ride on the track, as it’s a very wide and open flowing type of track. It was just good to be able to get our bearings on which way the track went and of course get our heads around the Dunlop tyres.

“These Dunlop control tyres are a different spec tyres to what we use back in Australia, so it was always going to be a learning day. With a day under our belt, we can now start working on bike set-up tomorrow and hopefully push for faster lap times.

Next Gen Motorsports team manager Wayne Hepburn said he’s satisfied with how day one rolled out, explaining a number of tyre options were the key focus, while today’s second phase of testing will allow the outfit to develop their set-up.

“As a whole, I’m happy and the team are also very happy,” Hepburn commented. “Our testing program today saw us testing a bunch Dunlop tyres, which we got through. We had five different rears and three different front tyres we had to go through. At the completion of tyres, Glenn seemed to like the softer compound tyres, so we then focused on them and trying to make the tyres last a bit longer.”

“As we just focused on tyres today, we now have to work on the bike set-up for tomorrow. We have a lot of work to do to be competitive with the local riders. It’s great to see that the field is so competitive and the local riders are keeping us honest. We are now looking forward to tomorrow, where we know we will improve a lot.”