The Swan Yamaha pairing of Tommy Hill and Noriyuki Haga completed their penultimate day on track at Cartagena today (Saturday) as the defending champion ended the day feeling impressed with his initial pace whilst Haga is eager to make amends tomorrow after a crash this afternoon.

Hill recovered from a high-speed crash yesterday after the team worked into the earlier hours to prepare the Swan Yamaha ready for today's sessions and he admits he was impressed with the progress after he was able to run similar times to that of last year. Haga returned to the track and continued to clock up the laps until a crash in the afternoon session, which lost him valuable track time, but the Japanese ace is determined to make up for lost time tomorrow.

Hill said:

"It was a really good day for me and I think we have surprised ourselves and others with the pace we have already, which is similar to last year. We are not counting our chickens yet because this is only testing but we have made a massive step forward here today. My crew chief PJ (Pete Jennings) and the boys have worked hard and we are really happy. It is always hard at the first test as you have a lot of the donkey work to do, but we have made some good steps with the new package, the new ecu and as yet we haven't even touched the chassis or fine tuned the fuelling. This is something we can look at tomorrow but overall I am really pleased."


Haga said:

"Today I had a stupid crash and it took a lot of time to repair the Swan Yamaha and I lost time on track so I am sorry for the team because this was disappointing. Tomorrow we will try and work on some different settings and continue to try and find a good feeling so we are ready for our next test and the first round. I will keep trying tomorrow and then we will go to another track which will also be good."

Team owner Shaun Muir concluded:

"First of all I want to say that I have been happy with the progress the Swan Yamaha team has made over the past two days and we have now decided to stay on for tomorrow. Tommy is already ahead of his planned schedule and is going to test a new spec engine next and Noriyuki has gelled well with the team and he will continue working on the chassis and fuelling. He lost time this afternoon with a crash, but it was just unfortunate that he ran on and the corner and then just lost the front. We will then have further time on track at Almeria next week but the lap times here have been very encouraging so we have no concern about the competitiveness of the Swan Yamaha."

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