Chaz Davies on the pace in California

Chaz Davies set a blistering pace on the FX-spec Attack Kawasaki on the first day of testing at California Speedway in the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles.

The Welshman lapped the 2.3-mile road course, tucked inside the 1.5-mile tri-oval, in an unofficial time of 1:26.3 minutes, a time that equaled Josh Hayes’ pole time from 2007 and that was over half a second faster than Hayes’ fastest race lap.

The time was made more impressive because Chaz Davies didn’t get on track until nearly noon, but still ended up turning in a workman’s 77 laps.

At the end of an intermittently cool, windy day Chaz Davies said: “Yeah, it was not too bad.

“Found a couple of things with chattering – we had a little bit of chatter at this test in January and at Daytona-found a couple of things with that, which way to improve it.

“Aside from that, we just tried a few different tires that we’d not tried before. We found some good stuff and some not so good stuff. That was a good step as well.

“We probably found out more about what works and what doesn’t than what we have at the other test. Rather than just going out and putting laps and laps and laps in, we’re just trying to find out what works.”

Chaz Davies added: “After we got rid of the chattering and changed the bike a bit I was doing 26.5, 26.6, 26.3. I only did one 26.3, but they were all in that area.”

In among the 77 laps was a number of long runs meant to test tyre durability. Tyre life later in the race was an issue with the Pirellis last season, but the Attack Kawasaki team has done better than most by using harder compounds.

The Formula Xtreme race is 17 laps and Chaz Davies put more than that on both a front and rear. He strung together-not continuously-26 laps on a rear and 28 on a front.

“The front’s really good,” Davies said.

“No bother whatsoever. A couple of the rears were going off, but a couple of them were really stable after the whole duration, for 18 laps.

The ZX-6 wasn’t hugely improved from the last test, and Davies said. “We’ve changed little bits and bobs. They were just refinements, more or less; nothing drastic. Just fine tuning the engine.”

The second and final day of testing includes some morning seat time on the FX-spec Kawasaki, then a switch to testing the Supersport ZX-6R.