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Eugene Laverty made his official return to WorldSBK and Aprilia this week with his first outing at winter testing at Jerez from Monday to Wednesday. With three days of varied weather, the Northern Irishman was able to get a good run in with almost all possible conditions he could experience in the 2017 season.

His return comes after he competed in the MotoGP™ World Championship for the last two years and even though he has a lot of experience in WorldSBK, it still took him a couple of days to get used to his RSV4 Superbike. The 30 year old was especially impressed with the Pirelli tyres of World Superbike, making the transition back into the Championship just that little bit easier.

“I’m surprised just how much grip the tyres have when it first hits the gas,” said Laverty. “Yesterday morning there were still some damp patches, it looked relatively dry but still a lot of damp patches out there. With these tyres it seems that the bike doesn’t react as much to the wet. If it had of been in MotoGP™ this year, then we may have been on our arse, but when Johnny came past he was absolutely flying across the damp patches, so I followed suit and got going.”

On returning to ride with the Aprilia Superbike again after three years, Laverty is pleased with the improvements the Italian marque has made to the bike.

“The Aprilia has definitely improved,” impressed Laverty. “It was good back then but some areas have improved right away… The guys had told me that in 2014 they’d made a big step and you can see that. Towards the end of ‘14 Sylvain and Marco were dominating the last lot of rides. It looked like they’d made a big step with the bike and it looked like it was a lot easier to ride and it definitely is.

“The bike was always good and looked after the tyres well, but it could still be difficult towards the end of the races. It often became more of a handful. Now I’d be happy to go out and do a 20 lap rung whereas three years ago I would of dodged that in testing because it used to really sap the energy out of you. Now the bike is a lot more manageable.”

The Northern Irishman puts a lot of the changes down to electronics improvements, saying, “Electronics, engine character… you know and chassis setting wise it isn’t too far off of what we were back then, so it seems they’ve made a big step with the electronics.”

On the first day of testing, Laverty focused on getting acquainted with his bike. On day two, he worked on tyres with the mixed conditions, putting in 45 laps. On his final day today, the Northern Irishman worked on comparing different engines and chassis components among other things. With the Milwaukee Aprilia World Superbike Team’s test schedule complete now until the new year, Laverty explains that the past three days were a great shakedown experience.  

“I’ve ticked off most of my targets I wanted to achieve at the test,” said Laverty. “The target was to get really comfortable on the bike because that often takes a few days to feel 100% on it. We sorted out the seat positions the other day and we were ready to go. It helps that Lorenzo has ridden this bike previously so we were able to get comfortable on it straight away. Today we tested some different engines and chassis parts so we’ve had a busy day but it went well.”

Eugene Laverty will suit up once again for their next test scheduled at the end of January, once again at Jerez, before he takes on the best of WorldSBK in the 2017 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship.