Carl Fogarty today sounded a note of caution ahead of his Foggy PETRONAS Racing team’s penultimate World Superbike championship round of the season at Imola, Italy, this weekend.

The four-times World Superbike champion was encouraged by the performance of Troy Corser at the previous round in The Netherlands, when the Australian achieved his second best finish of the season on the FP1 – the Malaysian superbike - with a stylish sixth place in the opening race. But Carl warned that the engine modifications which contributed to that improvement at the fast-flowing Assen circuit are unlikely to have as marked an effect around Imola’s tight corners and uphill sections.

Foggy said: “Just because we had a sixth at Assen doesn’t necessarily mean we will be able to repeat that at Imola, where you need a lot more acceleration and power for the slow corners and uphill drags. I have only ridden here once, for a Ducati test in 2000 with Ben Bostrom and Ruben Xaus. The weather was not helpful, but I did find it a difficult circuit to learn and my team has not tested here. So we will be aiming to finish in the top ten and I think that anything more than that will be a bonus.”

Corser still holds the Superpole record at Imola and was second in the first race of his only visit here, in 2001. But he echoed Carl’s realism, saying: “I really like the circuit but I do not think it will suit the FP1, at this stage of development, as much as Assen did. You need a lot of horsepower here as there are a few up and downhill climbs. The start-finish straight is also long, with top speed important. So I think this weekend is going to be one of the harder ones for us.”

Team-mate James Haydon has been struggling to recover from a hand injury sustained in a spectacular Assen crash, but is hopeful that, with painkilling injections, the strained tendons will not prevent a positive finish to his season. He said: “I would say that the hand is 80-85 per cent okay and some of the movements that I still can’t do I won’t really need for riding. I still don’t like people shaking my hand and it is a bit swollen but I have my grip back, which was what stopped me from racing at Assen. I also went out for a hard enduro session in Andorra, which is what you have to do with an injury like this, to break down the internal scar tissue.”