We are back to the European Superbike championship paddock to start this 2016 season.
We are again engaged with Pierre Texier, who ranked sixth last year, on the promising new 2016 Kawasaki ZX10R
Dorna has decided to classify Pierre in the SBK category, the fastest drivers class.
The bike arrived very late and we have not yet received all the parts, that's how we are behind the development of the machine.
We have done only one day of testing at Barcelona with the conclusion that this is a very different bike and we have a lot of work ahead.
First bad surprise, Michelin has brought only C rear tires, this compound did not satisfied anybody in November! Incomprehensible...
Second, our fairing, manufactured in Valencia, is declared non-compliant and technicals allows us to use it for this race only!
Free practice sessions At the request of the teams, Dorna added a free practice day on Thursday, so we take advantage of these four sessions to work on the setup.
The day ends with an alarming, we have a big problem with racing fork and we are stuck in very slow lap times.
The rest of the weekend will devote its efforts to offset this fork design problem.
The first qualifying session on Saturday. Despite our efforts Pierre Texier ranks seventeenth of the first qualifying session.
He rides two seconds slower than last year!
The second qualifying session We still progress to the second session and Peter class it 13th.
Pierre therefore start from sixteenth position, it is necessarily a big disappointment when aiming the podiums ...
Sunday morning, the warm-up. After additional adjustment, Pierre feels better the bike and ranks 9th.
The first race of the season. We are still adjusting the electronics to the race, this is risky but we have to move forward.
The race was reduced from 19 to 14 laps, the fastest drivers can not finish the race with this rear tire, appalling!
Here we are at last on the grid, at the bottom, here reminds us of distant memories :-)
We worked on the start launch at each session and hope it will go well, he has to win several positions at the start.
The lights go out and Pierre superbly launches, he choose to go right and ranks ninth at the first corner! The bulk of the work is already done.
He remains cautious because we changed the settings and the bike is always very tricky on the first turns to the right and subsequently falls two positions on the first lap.
Pierre mound a little on the Aprilia but he overtakes and make a gap.
A competitor is close behind him and they both go back to their predecessor, Pierre overtakes easily and gets a bit of air, he is ninth.
The eighth rides faster and Pierre must keep his position until the finish line with two competitors just behind him.
Two laps from the end the leader broke his rear tire, Pierre Texier is now eighth.
He scores his two best lap times in the 12th and final lap and manage to score the 8 points of the 8th position!
Pierre Texier made a perfect race, he was able to exploit the strengths of his bike, take risks as needed without exceeding the limits he had yet struggling to feel, very well done!
We are far from our goals but we nonetheless limited the damages.
We expect a new version of the fork but not soon, we will have to find solutions for the next two days of testing at Motorland.
The analysis of the collected data will allow us to progress further.
The race video can be watched here.
We thank a lot our partner KART System and our technical partners, LS2, Pam Racing, Dafy moto, Louit moto and Poupiz Performance.