Leon Camier hopes to improve his pace at Phillip Island as he bids to make a positive start to the 2012 World Superbike Championship for the Crescent Fixi Suzuki team this weekend.

Camier was eighth quickest on the GSXR1000 at the two-day Phillip Island, three tenths of a second behind Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes, who leads the way on his Ninja ZX-10R.

“Generally I am pretty happy because we’ve tried a lot of different things and made a lot of progress during these tests. We’ve collected a lot of data and we’ll analyse this over the next day or so to get ready for the race weekend,” he said.

“At the moment, I’m just missing out a little in just one sector of the track and if we can sort this out, I know I can lap quite a bit quicker. The track is always very hard on tyres, but this year it is much bumpier than ever before and that is causing a few problems.

“Nevertheless, I’m very happy with my lap times because I have gone half a second quicker than ever before here. Considering that this is a new bike for me and a new team, I think that’s a pretty good start and very encouraging for the future.

“I feel very comfortable on the bike. It is very rider friendly and doesn’t do anything crazy. I’m going to have a couple of days off now, but I’m already really looking forward to Friday and the first practice.”

Team manager Jack Valentine said he was optimistic for the opening races at the Aussie venue on Sunday.

“I am pretty content overall. It’s been a pretty tough test for us all, but we knew beforehand that it wouldn’t be easy. I am reasonably happy with what we’ve achieved, but would’ve been even happier if we had sorted out Leon’s third sector because that would’ve pushed him quite a bit further up the standings.

“We’ll look at all the data and try and sort it out in Friday’s practice sessions. Leon’s happy on the bike and it shows.”