The Pata Honda World Superbike team has completed a private three-day test at the Circuito Cartagena near Murcia in Spain.
It is the first time that riders Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea have ridden their new Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machines since returning from the opening round of the 2014 World Superbike championship at Phillip Island in Australia one month ago.
The pair used the test to continue development of chassis settings on their CBR machines, as well as refining power delivery and traction control. They will stay in Spain this weekend and move further south to Circuito de Jerez for another three-day test which starts next Monday.
“I’m happy with this test and we were able to make some good progress with the overall CBR package,” Haslam said. “We tested a new swingarm and some other chassis settings and we’re still waiting for one or two other elements to come through. We also worked on traction control which is a lot better now and to go 0.3s under the circuit record was a good way to finish. We’re going to do a bit of cycling before heading down to Jerez and we’ll see what the weather brings us down there.”
“We’ve made some really good steps here and our test rider, Michele Magnoni, did a really good job over the first couple of days, especially on Wednesday when it was really windy,” Rea added. “I rode with some new strategies that he was developing and I’m happy to be able to ride more aggressively on longer runs. The speed over one lap was good, too, but I was more satisfied with the longer runs. We also tried a lot of chassis settings, varying pivot points and things, and the bike is definitely steering better on tighter lines.”
Round two of the World Superbike championship will also take place in Spain, at Motorland Aragon on April 11-13.
–From Pata Honda
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