News

A successful full day of WSBK testing at the Portimao Circuit in Portugal saw Alex Lowes finish fifth in the combined times, finding good technical improvements and more speed and consistency.

Completing 87 laps on his Voltcom Crescent Suzuki GSX-R – the most of any rider on track – Lowes began the day working extensively on chassis settings, throttle control management and electronics strategy, finding solutions to his weekend struggles and allowing the British racer to set consistently competitive times as his confidence grew. The afternoon saw the switch to tyre testing with Pirelli, who provided 13 options (5 front and 8 rear) for the full Championship field to consider.

Significant improvement was also the story for Randy de Puniet, with increased confidence and feeling the Frenchman completed 46 laps – having suffered two technical issues resulting in sizeable delays to his testing schedule – finding over two seconds from his previous day’s pace and satisfied there is more to come from his Suzuki Superbike.

Technical partner Yoshimura was represented throughout the test by Fujo Yoshimura (President) and Yohei Kato (Managing Director) who were both on hand to offer technical assistance to the Voltcom Crescent Suzuki team.

The Championship heads to the Italian Riviera next as the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli hosts round seven on Sunday 21^st June.

Alex Lowes: “Race day was a real disappointment so it was good to test today and find some big improvements. I put in the work, completing more than four race distances today, and from mid-morning onwards we had the bike working well. This has been the first test opportunity since Aragon race, so it was important to improve! The throttle connection and power delivery are not yet perfect but we made a big step forward and I really hope this base will transfer to Misano. We also changed the chassis setting a lot, and this helped with corner entry and turning. I felt a lot more comfortable and a mid ’43 today was easier than a ’45 yesterday.

“This afternoon was all about testing tyres and I hope I did a good job for Pirelli. One of the new hard compound rears worked very well and I did a low ’43 on the tyre’s 12th lap, so that was good. Thanks to the team and everyone who is involved, onto Misano and we’ll do our best to move forward.”

Randy de Puniet: “This morning was difficult with a strange problem that lost us a lot of time. But this afternoon, with the issue fixed, we made a good step with the engine power delivery and engine brake. It’s not perfect yet but it is the solution that I have been looking for over the past few races and we are going in a good, good direction. The chassis side is also much better so if we can make the steps we’ve done today again at Misano, we will be much, much faster so this is good news. It has been a very interesting test and everyone is leaving here more confident than after the last race weekends, one more day would have been great, but it is better than nothing. I really hope to start with the same feeling in Misano and continue to work properly from there.”