Team HRC concludes its first post-lockdown tests in Spain

“Today has been quite productive despite a long stop in the garage this morning. Yesterday was less ideal as I had a crash in the morning: a wheelie turned into a big high side, so that definitely woke me up after the long break! I hit my head and ankle but luckily did no serious damage. Having said that, we had a productive afternoon on the second bike anyway, and as I said, another good session this afternoon. The main aim here was to analyse our Phillip Island performance and try to iron out a few of the issues we had there. I feel that the bike has great potential but that, considering the brand-new package, we simply need time. Many small things create a good package, and we are trying to find all that in what is a very short space of time. One positive is that Alvaro and I agree on many things, so this makes development a little smoother. All in all, I’m pleased. I hadn’t been at this track for 18 years, so it’s been good to get a feel for it again seeing as we’ll be racing here later in the summer. I feel we’ve been able to get up to speed here and then, as of the next test, we will have a long list of parts and elements to test.”

“This is only our first test back and so understandably it took me a little time to reset mentally and find the right feeling with my bike again, but now I already feel like I’m back in the groove let’s say. We haven’t really tested anything new here - that’s something we’ll focus on next time - and so we’ve concentrated mainly on confidence, and also on the electronics, working to find more traction through the corners and improve our braking on corner entry. I hadn’t ridden at this track for a while, and never with the Superbike of course, but it seems like it offers quite good grip; the levels are not at all bad, particularly considering the heat. Today we had to spend some time in the garage as the engineers had to analyse a lot of data to fix some issues we had, so we missed the chance to go for some fast lap times during the best part of the day. We’ve been productive anyway, and it looks like we’ve found some things to work on again next time out, when we will also have the HRC engineers present with some new parts for us to test.”