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Close Print Finance BLDS Honda's Craig Fitzpatrick got his pre-season preparations
underway with a week at the Cartagena Circuit in southern Spain. The test, which
attracted many of the British Superbike Championship and Evo contenders,
gave Fitzpatrick his first chance to try
out his newly built 2011 Honda Fireblade.
The week began with three days of track time with some of his sponsors and to
get a bit of time aboard his new machine ahead of the four-day Pro-Test. Early
running of the new Honda highlighted some technical problems similar to some of
those experienced last season with the 2010 machine.ine.
Thursday saw the start of the Pro-Test and Fitzpatrick continued to troubleshoot
electrical and mechanical issues. The team spent much of the first three days of
the test ironing out all of the issues and ensuring that all of the fixes were
robust enough to enable them to develop the chassis set-up.
Come Sunday, the final day of the test, Fitzpatrick was finally able to clock-up
some unhindered set-up time. Working on improving the chassis rather than
chasing quick lap times, Fitzpatrick was able to make steady progress through
the day. Fitzpatrick was able to lap in the high 1 minute 35s, which is the fastest
he has been around the 3.5km circuit.
Fitzpatrick commented: "It's been a useful test out here in Spain and we have
made some big steps forward with the new bike. I would have liked to spend more
time working on the chassis rather than bug fixing, but it's better that we find
these issues now than at the first round."
"The bike feels pretty good, and I was able to push quite hard. I managed to go
faster than I have ever gone around here, so that's definitely a positive.
Although to be honest, laps times aren't really important at this stage."
"Although the sun has been out, the temperatures have been cold and the track
temperatures have been lower than everybody would have liked. A few of the
riders have been getting caught out and crashing, thankfully we managed to avoid
any mishaps."
"We are currently looking into coming back out to Spain over the next few weeks to get
some more track time. It really depends on the weather, but we may just end up
going somewhere in the UK. It would be good to get some more time on the bike
before the official BSB tests at Brands Hatch and Snetterton 300 in April." |
