“To be honest, I feel like I can walk now, but I am just erring on the side of caution and am following the timetable set down by my doctors,” said Vermeulen who has just arrived back in Australia to spend some time with his family.
“Once I ditch the crutches, the next step in the process – at least from a motorcycle standpoint – will be getting on a little Kawasaki dirt bike and simply getting back into the groove of riding,” he continued. “And then I can look forward to testing at Sepang (Malaysia) early in January, where I can’t wait to try out the new ZX-10R for the first time.”
“But in the meantime, I’ll continue with the weekly physio treatment and plenty of time in the gym and surf,” he added,
Vermeulen is confident he’ll still be competitive in the opening round of next year’s world superbike title at Phillip Island from February 25-27 despite a truncated pre-season.
“The other riders have all started testing, but by the time Phillip Island comes around hopefully I will have had nine full days of testing under my belt,” said the 28-year-old Australian.
“That should put us in reasonable shape, and from what I’ve been hearing from the other guys (his 2010 team-mates Joan Lascorz and Tom Sykes) the new bike is a real weapon, and Kawasaki has managed to sort out the biggest issue with the old bike – a chassis that just wouldn’t let it carry a huge pace on high speed corners. And there’s certainly plenty of horsepower on the new bike, too,” concluded Vermeulen.
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