It’s been a positive testing season for Australian Remy Gardner (GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team) as he gears up for his second MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship season. Flying the flag for Filippo Conti’s team at the test with teammate Dominique Aegerter still unwell and out of action, the #87 stormed to fourth on the timesheets as he once again impresses.

Setting more laps than anyone else inside the top ten (89 laps to be specific), Gardner worked thoroughly throughout the day with plenty of long runs, whilst also launching a late time attack in the closing stages. Second Yamaha in the order to Jonathan Rea (Pata Yamaha Prometeon) ahead of him, 0.207s split the pair, with the Australian +0.355s off Nicolo Bulega’s (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) top time. Gardner topped the test at Jerez in 2023 immediately after the final round of the season and after a strong Jerez test last week, he’s taken his competitivity to Portugal.

Speaking after the first day in the Algarve, Gardner said: “We had a lot of things to try. It was a decent day and we got up to speed quite fast, we need to find something else for tomorrow but a good start. I managed to do an OK lap time in the end and of course I wanted more but it’s only day one. We tried to look for some grips and were reconfirming parts from Jerez. We tried some more tyres to but nothing new.”

“Tomorrow, we’ll work on our base setup and not work on testing so many things; we’ll treat as more of a race weekend,” resumed Gardner. “The first race is coming and we’ll try to be a bit better with the pace and do a long run as well tomorrow. I think we got off to a good start and both factory guys have really good pace. Hopefully we can find something for day two and find another step.”

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