Reigning Australian Superbike Champion Bryan Staring says he’s satisfied with his progress on day one of the Superbike World Championship tests at Phillip Island, outpacing highly experienced Italian teammate Roberto Rolfo.

The test marked Staring’s first ride of the Pedercini team’s WSBK-spec ZX-10R, eventually setting the 19th best time of a 1:34.047 in the afternoon session.

“I’m pumped – it’s awesome to be here and I love riding the bike,” the 23-year-old beamed. “This is what I expected it would be like when riding a World Superbike, so even though the lap time’s not right there yet, I’m having a lot of fun.

“The bike’s got a lot of power, moves around and changes gears really fast. It pretty much does everything that you see on TV!”

Still in the early stages of development, Staring said the team’s working through a number of settings in a bid to extract the most out of the new ZX-10R.

Staring was still at the circuit debriefing with the team when contacted by MotoOnline.com.au at 7:00pm this evening.

“We still have a lot to work through, just a lot of fine tuning and small things to work on,” he explained. “I would say we did a pretty good job today and the progress has definitely been good. If we can keep moving forward, hopefully we’ll end up in a reasonable position.

“The team’s working hard and so am I, so that’s all we can do at this point.”

Testing will continue tomorrow before the series kicks off this weekend for the opening round of the 2011 season.