Relentless Suzuki British Superbike riders Michael Laverty and Alastair Seeley posted impressive times during the team ’ s opening test session of the year at Cartagena in Spain last weekend; with road men Cameron Donald and Bruce Anstey also reacquainting themselves with their 2010 Suzuki equipment.
Laverty took his GSX – R1000 Suzuki into the low one minute 34s, which was on a par with the best times at the test, and Seeley also dipped into the magical 34-second bracket to end a successful four-day stint. Both riders completed over 100 laps.
Anstey and Donald completed numerous laps on both Superbike and Superstock machinery, logging a lot of information before their next outing at Castle Combe later this month. The team made a conscious decision not to record lap times in favour of set-up for both riders, trying out electronic packages, geometry settings and different tyres.
Michael Laverty
“ It ’ s been a really good test here at Cartagena and I can honestly say I now know my GSX – R1000 intimately! I have really gelled with the bike and I feel very comfortable on-board. I tested a lot of chassis and electronic variations to understand the limits of the bike and our lap times were very favourable indeed. In saying that, I take my confidence from the overall performance of the bike and the team around me at this test. ”
Alastair Seeley
“ I ’ ve enjoyed everything about this test and after doing around 140 laps I have to say the bike is working superbly well, and the boys in the team have helped me enormously with settings. This is the first time I ’ ve ever been to Spain testing, so with such a strong field around us, I ’ m very pleased with my consistent times on the Relentless by TAS GSX – R1000. ”
Philip Neill – Team Principal
“ This test has been a very positive start to 2010 for both our BSB and Road Race teams. We have worked extremely hard during the off-season and made some fairly radical changes to our Suzuki GSX – R1000s. We built two bikes with different specification to suit our road racing effort, rather than just share the BSB bikes, which we did last year. It's great for our mechanics to see the hard work pay off as we had no major issues and all the bikes performed well at Cartagena.
Michael and Alastair were testing a host of updates to our BSB bikes and although we still have some work to do in small areas, we found the answers we were looking for and will now move on to Guadix for the final leg of our Spanish trip. This will leave us well prepared to make the final adjustments before the guys have some final test outings in the UK before Brands on April 6th.”
Throughout the four days at Cartagena, the team worked on a host of major settings including traction control. They also worked on weight transfer ideas – again having gathered the information necessary to progress with Alastair Seeley who has very low body weight.
Michael Laverty also worked on the new K Tech Suspension set-up and reported a very good feeling from the new front fork, which speaks volumes for the work K Tech has put in.
