Valencia Testing
BAYLISS AND LANZI FIRST AND THIRD FOR DUCATI XEROX
IN VALENCIA SUPERBIKE TESTING
Valencia (Spain), Monday 19th March : Troy Bayliss's love
affair with the Valencia circuit continued as the Australian
set the quickest time on both qualifying (1m34.102s) and race
tyres (1m34.482s) in the two-day official FGSport tests at
the Spanish venue. His quickest time, obtained with just a
few minutes to go, was half-a-second faster than the circuit's
official outright best lap set by Neil Hodgson (Ducati) in
2003, but four-tenths of a second off Troy's own extraordinary
performance in testing exactly one year ago.
"It's one year later and I'm going slower so I must
be getting old!" joked Troy after today's extremely windy
marathon session. "I've had some pretty good results
here in the past as you know, and yesterday morning we got
pretty much onto the pace straightaway. In the afternoon the
track got a lot warmer and had a lot of wind and we struggled
quite a bit. So we really worked hard today and came up with
a couple of things in the afternoon and that got me more comfortable
and I just leave the test very happy. If we did the race now
I'd probably use the tyre I raced on last year because it's
very consistent, but who knows what things are like in a month's
time. The team worked really hard this weekend and it was
a good shake-down both to get me ready for Donington and to
give us a good starting-point for the race here in April."
Team-mate Lorenzo Lanzi was quickest out of the box today
and the Italian stayed at the top of the timesheets for much
of the day's five hours of circuit action, but was edged out
of the second spot towards the end by Ruben Xaus (Ducati).
"This morning I started off well immediately and was
quickest for most of the day" commented Lorenzo. "I
did the time with a race tyre because I managed to ruin my
qualifying lap and then seeing as the track conditions were
getting worse, I decided to keep the second qualifier for
the afternoon. Today we did a great job, testing a lot of
things and I'm pleased because we are on the right track.
Then in the last quarter of an hour I put softer tyres on
and started to lap quicker but when it was time to use the
qualifier the weather conditions suddenly changed bringing
strong winds and dust on the track, and then Ruben and Troy
got ahead of me. However I'm still pretty happy with my performance
despite not going as quick as I did in November when the conditions
were better."
TIMES : 1. Bayliss (Ducati Xerox) 1m34.102s;
2. Xaus (Ducati) 1m34.565s; 3. Lanzi (Ducati Xerox) 1m34.584s;
4. Biaggi (Suzuki) 1m34.708s; 5. Corser (Yamaha) 1m34.851s;
6. Haga (Yamaha) 1m35.029s; 7. Nieto (Kawasaki) 1m35.410s;
8. Muggeridge (Honda) 1m35.470s; 9. Neukirchner (Suzuki) 1m35.532s;
10. Laconi (Kawasaki) 1m35.639s.
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