Mike Hale shook down the brand new Erion Racing Honda CBR954RR Formula Xtreme bike today at Laguna Seca and will ride the bike in anger tomorrow.

"We had a couple of little problems with it, so we parked it and decided to concentrate on the 600," Hale said. "But we did some 1:30 laps on the 600, which is about a second quicker than we went when we tested here before."

Honda and Erion ruled the Formula Xtreme class in its first four seasons, winning with Andrew Stroud, Eric Bostrom and twice with Kurtis Roberts. Last year, both Suzuki's John Hopkins and Yamaha's Damon Buckmaster outclassed the Hondas.

So Honda went back to the drawing board and built a new bike. The Laguna Seca test will be the first track time for the 2002-spec 954 in the hands of Hale and teammate Roger Hayden. "So far we've just been running a hybrid bike with the new parts on it but tomorrow we'll buckle down with this year's full race bike," Hale said.