CAFFE LATTE TESTING CATALUNYA
16 February 2007 - Superbike School

The testing has been quite intense so far for Thomas and Sandro and there is no let up with another two sessions (Jerez and Losail) remaining before the season starts in Losail, Qatar in March.

Thomas Luthi
When we arrived at Catalunya Thomas had one of his bikes with a completely new frame to try out. The frame was called Madonna by the team due to the curvy shape of it around the middle. It has been designed to give the frame more flex and hopefully give more feeling to the rider in the corners, particularly the entry of the turn.

But this was not all for Thomas, he had a new engine to try out as well as several different carbon and alloy wheels, different sizes and compounds of tyres as well as ignition maps and any combination of the above things.It is surprising that giving all the feedback to the team he actually has time and concentration left to ride fast!

But ride fast he did and at the end of the two days he was 8th and about 1 sec off the pace which given all the things he tried out is bloody good going.

And still he was looking to make sure that his riding was ok so that the feedback he gave to the team was genuine and not a result of a riding issue that could give the wrong impression of some of the things he was testing. So we mainly worked tweaking his visual timing on some of the difficult crested turns and on his pick up on the exit of the turn for the best drive, and most important in 250, to conserve the rear tyre…

Sandro Cortese
Sandro did not fair as well in the tests. His new Aprilia has been having some engine problems that are proving a little difficult to fix.

Over the two days he didn’t get to ride much at all so it was difficult to get any real results as he was always concentrating on the bike and what it was or was not doing.

Despite that we still used the time to get him to do the best he could with the bike he had. Race bikes will never be perfect and so it lands to the rider to overcome and compensate for these problems.As a result we worked on more progressive throttle control until the rains came again.

The team thought that with the current engine issues nothing would be gained from riding as the chances of a crash were too great so that was pretty much it for Sandro’s testing.

Next week it is back to Jerez for a further two days with each class (four days total) and as all the riders will be there we will get a better idea of where both riders can run in the coming season. Of course, there will still be a lot of testing going on so the times may not reflect the potentials!

All the best

Andy

www.superbikeschool.co.uk

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