The Bennetts Suzuki team is confident of building on the potential shown at Donington Park and round one of the MCE British Superbike Championship earlier this month, after completing two positive tests ahead of round two at Brands Hatch this Easter weekend.

The team gave the brand new GSX-R1000 its first win when Richard Cooper took victory in race two at the opening round of the National Superstock 1000 championship last time out, highlighting the strength of the standard machine.

With the base package brimming with potential, the team is looking to develop it into a contender for race wins in the Superbike class for Sylvain Guintoli and Taylor Mackenzie. Despite the tricky season-opener and all the challenges that come with developing a new bike, confidence is high after more private testing, and the team is relishing the chance to get back on track and continue the hard work.

Sylvain Guintoli, 

"It was a very interesting test this week, and we made a big step with the bike and our performance, but also with our understanding. The team has spent lots of time going over the data from Donington. We've gone in a different direction now, and made lots of progress and we set some fast times. We've done a lot of work with the electronics, as we needed to better understand how the bike works with them. The engine makes a lot of power as standard, so in Superbike spec it's really strong, and we needed to manage it better. We've also worked on rear suspension setup, and made some big progress. I've got some fond memories of Brands Hatch, I was on pole and won my first race with Suzuki in BSB in 2009. It's an interesting circuit and it's another one I know. But it's going to be really competitive. We saw at Donington how competitive it was to be in the top-10, so around Brands Hatch it's going to be really close. The extra test tomorrow will help us more, and we're planning on back-to-back testing some more components. We'll then make a call on which way we go for the races."

Taylor Mackenzie, 

"We lost a lot of track time over the weekend at Donington Park, so it was good to get out last weekend at Mallory Park, just to get some more laps in. It was really productive; we had a lot to work through but we got a lot of time on the bike and tried lots of different things, and in the end I set my best ever lap time around Mallory. It's always difficult to start with with a new bike, but the progress we've made is good. We showed at Donington we can push for top-10s already, and at Brands Hatch it'll be as close as ever, but the aim is still to get into that top-10, but if we come away with two good, points-scoring finishes, I'll be happy."

Richard Cooper, 

"The test last weekend gave us chance to try some things we'd probably be too scared to try at a race meeting to be honest, in case we lost the session. But we've made a big step with the bike. Mallory Park's good to test at, especially as we wanted to work on our corner entry. I think we've gone a long way to improving in that area, and it's something we'll really see the benefits of at tracks with tighter, slower corners. We've still got the great drivability, which should get us out of corners well, like Clearways and Paddock Hill, but the changes we've made mean we should be able to pass better into Paddock and Druids, two of the main passing points. I'm confident we'll be on the pace, but it's going to be tough, and with the longer race, back-markers could play a part and it's the sort of thing that could cost you two or three seconds in one lap. But I'm up for the challenge."

Steve Hicken - team manager, 

"We've done a lot of work since Donington. We've back-to-back tested a lot of components to work out the best direction to go in, and also worked hard on our setup. As a result, we're expecting a lot more this weekend, and the extra practice session will also help; Brands is a good place to test as you're coming across the same piece of track more often, so we can try a few different things. We're confident coming into this weekend, and we should make a big improvement.

"In Superstock our goal is to carry on from Donington and hopefully get another win or two under our belts from Brands Hatch. We've shown we're competitive in the class already, and we've just worked a bit more on the bike's setup with Cooper this week. With the number of bikes out there and the amount of laps we've got, in the first race especially, we're expecting it to be really busy, but we've shown we can battle it out and hopefully we'll come away with some more trophies."