Vance and Hines Ducati rider John Kocinski says things are looking up for him in Colorado. After this morning's session Kocinski told AMASuperbike.com, "I am looking forward to the afternoon session to try to be able to improve things. I was able to do good times with a tire that had a lot of miles on it, close to race distance. That's the important thing to do be able to race on old tires. My bike is good now. I wish I could go back to Elkhart, Mid Ohio, Laguna, places like that. I know I could go a couple of seconds a lap quicker. Which probably would have meant winning some of the races, not all but some. But all the races are tough, and its never over to Sunday afternoon. My bike is good now, and we have started working in a good way.

Kocinski commented on his late in the session crash: "It was just a mistake on my part. No big deal, I rode the bike back, and we are ready for the afternoon session."

Kawasaki's Eric Bostrom and team are in reverse mode this weekend. Normally the Superbike operation takes a half step ahead of the Supersport duties in order of importance, but this weekend, things are reversed. Bostrom and Honda's Kurtis Roberts are tied in points.

Eric says being the only factory rider on the 600 machine is both good and bad. "Of course you get the best stuff that way," he says. "The downside is you have to do all the development stuff yourself, and there isn't really time to do it in a race weekend."

"We are a solid fourth in the Superbike," says Kawasaki co-crewchief Al Ludington. "We might ... could get third, but Aaron is riding really well. Our lead over Doug looks pretty safe at this point. We are kind of in a rut with the Superbike, so we can experiment a bit and try some different stuff like offsets, wheelbases, or different suspension links. We're going to try some new ideas, which may end up with us going in a weird direction."

How much does the altitude effect the horsepower? "We don't have a dyno here so we don't know exact numbers," Ludington commented, "but the Pro Stock drag bikes usually do times in the 6:10 range, and they wee doing 6.75s the last time they were here. We make adjustments, but the main thing we try you do is get the throttle response right."

As the moments click down to first qualifying, the skies around the PPIR facility are darkening and rain looks to be on the way. Follow the weather here.

More in a jif!