Tarran Mackenzie started his Bennetts British Superbike Championship title defence at Snetterton last weekend, as he got back on the McAMS Yamaha for the first time since sustaining his pre-season training injury.

Having broken his ankle and dislocated his shoulder in January, reigning champion Mackenzie rolled out of pitlane again for the first time last Friday morning. Under the instruction from the team to ease himself back in, Mackenzie focused on building his bike strength up but soon felt able to improve the bike and his lap time.

The team reported post test that his shoulder did still cause him some discomfort but in spite of this, he ended the test seventh fastest, just over half a second off of his teammate Jason O’Halloran’s time and just 0.013s adrift of the lap record.

Mackenzie said:

“Overall I’m really happy, having had two months of pretty much nothing but recovery and little training I didn’t know how I’d feel on the bike. I’ve surprised myself a little bit as I didn’t feel too bad with my shoulder or fitness wise either.

“Over the last two days I have got more confident and comfortable with the bike, which was pretty much the same as it was at Snetterton last year, so it was just about doing laps and getting the feeling back.

“In the last run we made a little change to the bike which helped a lot and I gained some confidence, it was only seven laps, but it was the longest run I’d done over the three days so I was happy with that. It’s put us in a good direction with myself and the bike moving forward.”