Pitt bracing for a dog fight

Andrew Pitt will begin his defence of the Supersport World Championship at Victoria's Phillip Island from February 27 until March 1, and the Aussie is bracing for a bombardment from all angles.

Although world supersport has lost two of last year's top three riders - Aussie Josh Brookes and Briton Jonathan Rea - Pitt refuses to be lulled into a false sense of security.   He is under no illusions that next weekend's season opener at the island will be the start of a long and grinding campaign.

"Sure, a few have left, but just look at the replacements: Eugene Laverty, Anthony West, Cal Crutchlow and, of course, my Honda teammate Kenan Sofouglu, who won the title in 2007," said Pitt. "The championship is stronger than ever and I'm looking forward to the challenge."

Pitt, who lives between the Isle of Man and Australia's Gold Coast (and originally hails from Kempsey), will compete in the opening two rounds of his year's championship on last year's model CBR600RR, but he's not losing sleep over it.

"The parts hadn't arrived in time to get the new machines up and running, so we made the decision to start the year on the '08 bikes," said Pitt who races for the Dutch Ten Kate Honda outfit. "I'm on a fully developed machine and I know it's fast around Phillip Island.

"Because I've been on the old bike, testing so far has been about trying out different electronics and tyres, and other stuff like brake pads.

"At the last major test in Portugal, not much was achieved because of the bad weather, so I'm really looking forward to heading down to the Island this weekend for some testing and putting in some long runs in preparation for March 1.

"I'm been doing a lot of cycling lately, and I'm as fit as I've ever been heading into a season. It'll be interesting to see how I feel on the bike this weekend."

Pitt won last year's Phillip Island race, which culminated in a thrilling six-way charge to the finish line - reinforcing the maxim that fast circuits make for close racing.

The supersport lap record at Phillip Island is 1:34.976, just over three seconds slower than the much more powerful superbikes.

Pitt will be testing alongside a number of other factory riders this weekend, including Triumph's Garry McCoy, but a clutch of privateers are already in shakedown mode, including compatriots Mark Aitchison and West.

Both will be on Hondas in 2009, as will Russell Holland, while former Australian 250 GP champion Shaun Geronimi will start the year on a Suzuki.

If Geronimi finds some more sponsorship dollars to extend his tenure past Qatar's round two, it will make Australia and Italy the most represented nations in 2009 with six riders apiece.

West, the former Kawasaki MotoGP rider, joins supersport full-time after a few superb cameos on a Yamaha in 2007, and he'll be determined to finally show local spectators what he can do on competitive equipment.

This year is also a defining one for the gifted Aitchison, who has all the skills to become a regular front runner. And he's a colossus around Phillip Island when he's on song, reflected in some sizzling domestic performances in late 2006 before he left for Europe.

Meanwhile, McCoy's best result in 2008 was at Phillip Island when he finished sixth, just 1.228secs behind Pitt. After that stirring ride, his season lost much of its lustre with bike and then injury, but the diminutive Andorran-based Sydneysider is now fully fit again and on an updated Daytona 675 triple.

Of the internationals, rookie Crutchlow (Yamaha), Sofouglu, Eugene Laverty (Honda), Joan Lascorz (Kawasaki) and Fabien Foret (Yamaha) are the standouts.

Foret (2002) and Sofouglu (2007) are former world champions, and Crutchlow is straight out of the British Superbike Championship.

"The Yamahas are definitely fast, so they are always hard to beat around Phillip Island," said Pitt. "But the Hondas are fairly potent too, and the high-speed nature of Phillip Island is all about being smooth and maintaining momentum.

"The new Kawasaki is also fast straight out of the box, and Lascorz has certainly gelled with it.

"All will be revealed in just over a week. I'm just looking forward to getting back into the swing of things."

For all the details on Phillip Island, click here.