The Pata Maxus Yamaha squad took advantage of a sunny day at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve on Friday, 13^th March to continue testing for their MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship campaign. After rain washed out the second day of action last week, the team stayed in Portugal along with a few other outfits and were lucky enough to find a day of bright sunshine, allowing riders Xavi Vierge and Andrea Locatelli to continue their test programme.

VIERGE FINDS THE POSITIVES: “Our race pace is strong…”

Spanish star Vierge completed 56 laps on Friday, setting a best time of 1’40.475s to finish just 0.002s behind Sam Lowes (ELF Marc VDS Racing Team) after getting the most out of the softer tyres in the afternoon. In the morning, the #97 focused on race pace. His longest stint was nine laps long and all of his lap times were in the 1’41s, ranging from 1’41.144s to 1’41.434s, showing consistency as well as strong outright pace.

Discussing his test, Vierge said: “I’m super happy with the test we had in Portimao, I would like to thank the team and Yamaha for allowing us to stay to be able to complete the test today because it was very necessary for us to prepare for the next race. I’m very happy, we did a lot of work in the morning to assess different set-ups to reconfirm our base. It’s something we needed to do and during the lunch break the team did a very good job to decide what is the best package for us. Then we “went for it” in the afternoon to find the fine tuning. I feel comfortable on the R1, and our race pace is strong – and also, we tried the softer tyre and we were able to extract quite a lot of potential from it which is not always easy here at Portimao. Overall, I’m happy with the day and it was necessary for us to reset after the first round. Now it’s time to go home and rest a bit, soon we will be back racing!”

MIXED DAY FOR LOCATELLI: “I found a good rhythm with my R1 in the morning, then I crashed in the entry of the last corner”

Locatelli had a trickier day on Friday, unable to complete a Tissot Superpole simulation during the day’s action but still racked up 80 laps. His day was interrupted by a crash at the entry to the final corner and he finished in eighth place with a best time of a 1’41.746s. His longest stint was eight laps long with his times in the 1’42s and 1’43s bracket. In this run, his best lap was a 1’42.498s, while his worst was a 1’43.760s – which was his first lap of the run.

Expanding on his test programme, ‘Loka’ said: “I found a good rhythm and a good feeling with my R1 in the morning, then unfortunately I crashed in the high-speed entry of the last corner. For sure, we lost a bit of confidence and then we found some other problems that needed to be looked at. In general, it was positive until we stopped for lunch and then in the afternoon, we tried many different things to understand how to improve our set-up. We have found the way a little, so now we have some time to come back home again to check the data and analyse everything and then decide where to start the race weekend as fast as possible.”

CANEPA’S THOUGHTS: “I believe Vierge was the best rider on track in his race pace”

Yamaha Motor Europe’s Road Racing Sporting Manager, Niccolo Canepa, added: “It’s been a very productive day in Portimao, I would like to say thank you to the crew who have stayed a few days longer than expected in Portugal. It was an effort that paid off as it was necessary for us to do a proper full test day with good temperature, sunshine and good track conditions. We are extremely happy with the work done by Xavi’s side, because he was able to understand and find his rhythm very well – and especially this afternoon, I believe he was the best rider on track in his race pace. He finished P2, just two-thousands of a second behind Sam Lowes, so this is encouraging for the race weekend. He felt comfortable and said it felt easy to find the lap time and be consistent, which is for sure what we were looking for. On Loka’s side, he started well this morning and had a good feeling, then unfortunately he had a crash that hindered a little bit the improvement and the plan for the afternoon. We were going in the right direction, but after that it took time to recover the rhythm – but even though the lap time didn’t come, we understood something very important so now we have time to go back home and analyse the data deeply and we will be ready for Round 2 in Portimao. We know that the target is to do much better than what we did in Australia, and I believe this test has been really helpful to improve the overall package of the R1 and the feeling of the riders.”

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