BAYLISS (DUCATI XEROX) SETS RECORD PACE IN PHILLIP ISLAND
TESTS
Troy Bayliss continued his brilliant pre-season form for
the Ducati Xerox team as he set a record-breaking pace in
three days of testing at Phillip Island. Riding the latest-spec
999F07, Troy fired in a 1m30.7s lap on the final morning in
the cooler conditions, the fastest time ever recorded by a
Superbike machine around the Phillip Island circuit, before
wrapping up his testing schedule at the lunch break. Bayliss's
team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was a perfect back-up, the Italian
finishing the Pirelli development tests second overall with
a time of 1m31.2s.
"It's been a good three-day test" declared the
2006 world champion, Bayliss. "We tried some new settings
and electronics and the latest Pirelli tyres and were able
to set some fast lap times although over the race distance
things were a bit different. Even though today's long-run
didn't go as well as we had hoped, yesterday's simulation
was good and we learnt a lot of things that will benefit us
for the race here in March. I'm very happy with the way the
bike is working and we went faster than the race pace of last
year so everything is going really well".
"Everything went well in these three intense days of
testing" commented Lorenzo. "We tried out a lot
of things and the results are plain to see. We were always
amongst the quickest, except for the first day when I didn't
go for a fast time. With the race tyre we did a great job
and we sorted out a lot of things to improve the set-up of
the bike. Last year I was one and a half seconds off Troy's
pace on race tyres on this track, this year the gap is only
four tenths of a second so this for me is an excellent performance".
TIMES (provided by Pirelli): 1. Bayliss
(Ducati Xerox) 1m30.7s; 2. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 1m31.2s; 3.
Toseland (Honda) 1m31.7s; 4. Corser (Yamaha) 1m32.2s; 5. Laconi
(Kawasaki) 1m32.2s; 6. Kagayama (Suzuki) 1m32.3s; 7. Nieto
(Kawasaki) 1m32.3s; 8. Biaggi (Suzuki) 1m32.4s; 9. Haga (Yamaha)
1m32.8s; 10. Rolfo (Honda) 1m33.2s.
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