It was a comeback ride for Vermeulen, as the Australian had just recovered from the knee surgery he had a while back to replace the lateral meniscus with a type of plastic. The 28-year-old rider has ridden at Sepangmany times before, so he only had to focus on getting acquainted with the new Kawasaki racebike.
“I eased into it today and only did a limited number of laps, over three separate runs. I stopped before lunch today and then the rains came later in the afternoon, but we will go out again tomorrow. The new bike feels really good. The last bike I rode around Sepang was a GP machine, so to be impressed with this motorbike already shows it is a very good start,” Vermeulen was quoted as saying in a release from Kawasaki.
“All the guys have done a great job in developing it. I was happy to come away with that positive impression, even after a relatively short number of laps so far,” he said.
“Right now I cannot quite bend my knee enough when going round right hand corners, but my knee has improved a lot over the last couple of weeks. Everything in the recovery of my knee is going to plan, and in fact I am quite a bit ahead of what the doctors expected. My muscle growth is good, particularly considering I have only been walking for three weeks,” Vermeulen said about his rehabilitation process.
On the other hand, Sykes and Lascorz focused more on familiarizing themselves with the wide and relatively long circuit, as well as on finding base settings to work with for the rest of the tests, which end January 14th.
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