With typical Florida showers shortening the riding portion of the first test day considerably, the preparations that some teams had made, or in some cases, not made, might have been the story of this first day of Dunlop Tire Test Week.

Possibly the least prepared of all were the two Competition Accessories bikes to be ridden by John Kocinski and Larry Pegram. Having just received some special components from the Italian factory, including new pistons and heads with revised included valve angles, the unpainted 996 machines were put together just in time for today's test.

Ducati's new race honcho David Roy informed amasoup that the two Ohio-based C/A machines have "one or two more horsepower" than the identical-appearing mounts ridden by the HMC duo of Scott Russell and Steve Rapp. These are not the new 'testastretta' motors, but simply 2001 updates to the 2000-model 996 mill. In addition, Kocinski uses old-school 42mm Öhlins forks rather than the 46mm legs the teammate Pegram and the HMC crew prefers. (and everyone else in town, for that matter) Former World Champion Kocinski apparently likes "a bit of flex," according to Roy.

Prepared or not, Kocinski did only enough laps to warm the oil thoroughly, including three or four motor break-in laps at a 9000 rpm limit - yet still set unofficial fastest time of 1:50.6.

"I've literally only done seven or eight laps," a relaxed Kocinski explained. "We don't even have the computers on the bike yet, so we can even check any information. We still have a lot of work to do to get everything prepared, so it's really still to early to comment on anything."

If those exploratory laps are any indication, the opposition may need to find some extra ponies themselves. Roy commented that Competition Accessories got the special parts simply because they were willing to write a check for them. HMC, on the other hand will have to wait until Sears Point to get the unobtanium.

Meanwhile over at the less controversial Honda camp, both the Bruce Transportation team and the factory team had the new, limited edition CBR600F4i to play with.

After he and fellow Canadian Colin Fraser completed some much-needed coaching on the correct spelling and pronunciation of his name, grizzled veteran Miguel Duhamel commented on the new bike. Uncharacteristically sidelined while his crew puzzled over some discrepancies in the length of his fork tubes, the all-time AMA Superbike win leader extolled the virtues of the brand new middleweight.

"I'm really happy with it," explained Duhamel. "A lot of people were really concerned with the other companies and the stuff they're bringing out, you know? But I think we're looking really good. Our bike's really early on in development now, we're just basically box stock. To be that competitive right now is a really good sign for that motorcycle."

Josh Hayes, Bruce Transportation Honda teamster, was just trying to get his bearings. "So far, I'm having a lot of fun riding it. More or less, I'm trying to get me up to speed. We had a pretty rough test a couple of weeks back (in Pahrump, NV) and beat my body up pretty good about three weeks ago - and then there's last time I was here (at Daytona, referring to his 600 SuperSport crash exiting the chicane last March) I'm just trying to get back up to speed. I'm trying to feel things out and get a little confidence so I can feel like the old me again."

New Yoshimura Suzuki recruit Jamie Hacking was smiling and at ease. "It feels pretty good. I'm getting used to the team and how they go about doing things, getting them used to how I want my bike, and it's going good. These 600s are pretty much all similar. The new Suzuki accelerates really good. I can ride anything - put me on anything, I can ride it. But for the first time on the bike, it felt really good."

Doug Chandler is the old guy on the old bike - the ZX-7 is eons old, but that leaves out any questions of whether it will be race-worthy, only whether or not the ancient design can hang with the new blood. Chandler, as ever, was upbeat and philosophical.

"We kind of got a late start with the weather, but everything's coming along good. If we get two more solid days, then we'll get a few more things sorted out, but today's gone really well so far. The bike's going good. We're working on just mainly chassis, just trying to get as much out of these Daytona tires that we have to run on as possible. They tend to drop off quite a bit later on (in the race) and that's the key, I think."

Over at Hansen Motorsports, Rapp and Russell were busy - Russell shaking hands with the Ducati for the first time, and Rapp, in contrast, fine-tuning the very same machine he rode at Vance & Hines earlier this year. Russell had the agnominity of running out of fuel on the backstretch keep him out of action for some time in the shortened session, but the Georgian put in enough laps to force the improvised installation of some bubble wrap under his leathers to keep the banking's washboard surface from painfully bashing his chest against the tank repeatedly.

Rapp was optimistic: "Feels good- just like home. We started with the exact some setup from the race last year. When I came here last year, we started with Ben (Bostrom's) setup, so it took me two or three days to get what I liked. So now we started with how I had it in the race (the 200), which was pretty good, not perfect and we tried some new stuff that I had tried at Willow that I liked, and it's better. We got a step in the right direction."