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Just days after the conclusion of the seventh round of the 2024 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship, Team HRC couldn’t quite pack their suitcases for holidays as they headed north from Portimao to Estoril for testing duties. Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge had to cut their testing schedule down from two planned days to just one after strong winds hampered Wednesday running; whilst temperatures were higher on Thursday, winds were lower, enabling them to get down to business quickly, with new components, electronics setup and suspension setup being just a few things on their agenda, yielding encouraging results to move on from.

“SUPER-PRODUCTIVE DAY OF TESTING” – breakthrough for Vierge?

After a strong Portimao yielded a double top ten on Sunday, Vierge explained the positivity of the test at Estoril: “We were finally able to ride today, and it was the right decision to wait because the track conditions were much better than they were on Wednesday. The surface was a bit dirty at first due to the wind, but lap by lap we started to clean it and ended up having a super-productive day of testing—one of the best so far, I’d say. It’s true that we were last here in 2022, and everyone has improved a lot since then. But we need to compare it with the data we have, and we can see a step forward in terms of both pace and speed, so we’re happy about that and with the work we’ve done.

“We made some adjustments to the bike setup and suspension, which gave me a bit more confidence into the turns. We also worked on the electronics throughout the day and found something that gave me that little extra. We made two 'Superpole' long runs with two different bike setups, and the positive thing is that I was able to be fast with both. We were able to explore and understand the strengths of each, which is great and will give the technicians important data to analyse. Once again, a big thank you to the team for the well organised and productive schedule today, and to everyone who is working so hard to make this project successful.”

“WE CLARIFIED MANY THINGS” – Lecuona pleased with progress, SCQ tyre gains

On the other side of the box, Lecuona also enjoyed himself on track despite a small crash at Turn 1: “Having not been able to ride yesterday due to the conditions, today was quite a busy day. Everything went pretty well, to be honest. We worked on some new items and setups, conducted back-to-back tests, and, as always, some things worked better than others. At the end of the morning, I had a small crash through Turn 1, nothing major at all, so I just picked up the bike and completed the session. In the afternoon, the grip dropped significantly and the wind picked up but despite this, we managed to set some good lap times on race tyres while working our way through a very clear and well-defined schedule to set up the bike and test some updates.

“Everything went smoothly, both on track and in the garage, so at the end of the day, we put in two 'SCQ' tyres. It was one of the few times we didn’t have to adjust the bike to use the soft tyres, and we were able to take full advantage of the extra grip they offered, which I was pleased about. Overall, we clarified many things for the Japanese engineers and for ourselves too, so I think we’ve done a good job. Now for some rest before heading to France for the next round.”

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