The Honda WorldSBK Team completed the first round of winter testing at MotorLand Aragón on Thursday. It was the first outing on board the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP for new signing Stefan Bradl, who along with Nicky Hayden completes the team’s lineup for the 2017 FIM Superbike World Championship.

Only a few days after the end of his MotoGP™ season, Stefan Bradl got to grips with his Honda Fireblade, while becoming accustomed to his new team. The former Moto2™ Champion quickly got up to speed and was able to start working with the team on early set-up changes. Despite not focusing on speed in what was his very first experience in production-based motorcycle racing, Bradl clocked a fastest time of 1’51.1 and completed 134 laps over the two-day test.

“It has been a busy two days of testing,” said Bradl. “Almost everything was new to me so we had a lot to learn, but I think we’ve done a good job. I was able to adapt to the bike quite quickly and the two long runs definitely taught me a lot, as they gave me a good feeling for the future and told me how to modify my style in regards to tyre wear. We tried a couple of things with the front and rear suspensions as well as with the geometry of the bike; we played around with the set-up, found our own way with things, and the feeling improved, outing after outing. It’s been a very useful test to know how the bike and the team work and I think everyone can be happy with what we’ve done so far.”

Using the same machine he raced this season, Hayden tried new electronics complying to next year’s regulations, a new 2017-spec front fork from Öhlins and new brake components. Hayden lapped Aragon 132 times with a 1’50.8 being his fastest time.

“Well, I think overall we’ve been pretty fortunate with the conditions: it wasn’t beach weather, but for being late November we’ve had a couple of really nice afternoons,” offered Hayden. “We did a good number of laps and were able to go through some stuff; of course, we kept working with the 2016 bike trying to develop what we still could. Yesterday we spent a lot of time evaluating Pirelli tyres with a couple of positives. We worked on what we think will be the same on next year’s bike but for other things like the clutch, for example, we aren’t sure yet whether it’ll be the one we’ll use in 2017. But we did work on brakes and suspension settings that we can put to good use for the future. Overall we can be happy with what we’ve done.”

The Honda WorldSBK Team will be back in action next Monday for a further two days of testing at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain.