WORLD SUPERBIKE SQUAD COMPLETES FIRST TEST
18 November 2004 - Yamaha Racing

The Yamaha Motor Italia world superbike team completed three days and 865km of testing at the Valencia circuit today, with Australian rider Andrew Pitt declaring himself satisfied with the YZF-R1''s debut outing.

Pitt completed a total of 215 laps on the YZF-R1 in the team''s shakedown test ahead of next season''s Superbike World Championship campaign. Despite running a hybrid machine with many stock parts, the team recorded competitive lap times and gained a great deal of data as they prepare to return to Italy for further development work.

For Pitt the test was a chance to familiarize himself with the R1 and the Pirelli tyres used in the championship. His best lap of the test was a 1''36.9, which compared favourably to the fastest time of the test - a 1''36.0 recorded by Suzuki''s Troy Corser.

Andrew Pitt
''This has been a really productive test and a good first outing. We''ve barely stopped over the last three days but the team is very motivated and very professional. I''m feeling good because we''ve been able to get through so much work. Considering the bike is only in its early stages of development, it shows great potential and today we were able to drop from a best lap of 1''38.5 on Wednesday to a 1''36.9.''

Massimo Meregalli (team coordinator)
''It has been a good test for us, unbelievably good in fact. Always on the first test you expect to have some problems but we had no technical faults at all. Andrew was able to do a total of 215 laps (75 on Tuesday, 80 on Wednesday and 60 on Thursday) and we were able to try out all the tyre choices available to us. He has worked so hard and we leave here in a positive mood and knowing what areas of the bike we have to work on and improve. We will probably now concentrating on developing the bike rather in the taking part in another test. We have to make some decisions on the specification of the bike, but we will have the advantage of using the 2005 kit parts as our base for the next test and overall the bike should be quite different.''

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