Parkes and ECHO CRS make inroads in testing

It's been a tough year in many ways for the ECHO CRS team and its experienced rider Broc Parkes. A pre-season injury saw Parkes forced out of the first few rounds with a broken right leg. Since his return to action, problems with chatter from the chassis set-up have proved difficult to eradicate, particularly as the team has had no opportunity to test with Broc until the two-day Imola outing last week.

Progress was made almost immediately in those tests for Parkes, who was enthused by the day one's promise, only for a technical issue to intervene on day two. "The first day was really good but because we had limited time on the second day after a technical problem. We had to use an engine with a different configuration, we had not been as happy with," said Broc.

"We haven't tested all year and we needed to have that test at Imola really badly. We found a lot of things that were good, and some that was not so good. I was glad about that. We still had some chatter but it was a lot better in the test than it has been all year. I hope we come to Brno with the things I asked for on the bike. I am hoping that we can get our two bikes close to the same spec. That would be a good start at Brno, and would make life a lot easier."

Broc, 28-years-old, is a serial race winner in the Supersport World Championship, but it was in the Superbike World Championship that he first came to global recognition, in 2001.