The last pre-season tests are over, with Eugene Laverty happy with progress and looking forward to the season proper starting this coming weekend at Phillip Island.
Team Go Eleven went on track in the two days pre-race test sessions with an experimental configuration trying to understand feedback from its Ducati V4-R on the beautiful and iconic track. Several components only arrived on Sunday night and the crew worked almost continuously to make everything fit perfectly.
On Monday, Eugene did many laps, testing many different setups and solutions, and constantly improving his time with used tyres. The work of the team focused mainly on chatter and on the balance of the bike.
The V4-R immediately gave a lot of confidence to Eugene, and the information he collected was fundamental for the team, who worked until late at night to make further changes.
On Tuesday, the lap times showed off the progress of the work done on the first day of testing; Eugene improved the race pace and managed to set a good lap time, stopping the lap time on 1.31.986 just 1.6 seconds from the first.
Unfortunately, however, the whole test programme could not be completed because of a technical problem, which stopped him at the box in the afternoon.
Friday 22 February officially sees the first race weekend of the year get underway.
Eugene Laverty
“We have made progress during this final pre-season test and my team are working day and night to improve the bike for me. Unfortunately we were only able to make thirteen laps today before we suffered a technical problem and so our test was finished early. We need more time to be ready but nevertheless we will keep working hard to try to be ready for the first race of the season.”
Photo credite: wd.jrphoto