The McAMS Yamaha team were back on track for the first time since March today (Thursday) as Tarran Mackenzie and Jason O’Halloran rolled out of pit lane for a shakedown test at Knockhill.

With less than a month until the Championship gets underway at Donington Park, the team headed to Scotland for their first run out since a private test session at Almeria in March.

After the enforced period of no riding, both Mackenzie and O’Halloran returned to the track earlier this month for some training laps on road bikes before getting back on their 2020 YZF-R1 superbikes today.

Completing 80 laps of the 1.3-mile Knockhill circuit, Mackenzie was pleased with how quickly he got back up to speed with the 2020 R1 and felt strong on the bike.

It was a strong day for O’Halloran too, who was working with new crew chief Barry Stanley for the first time.

McAMS Yamaha will return to the track at Croft in just over a week’s time as they continue their preparation for the 2020 season before their testing programme concludes at the official Bennetts BSB test.

Mackenzie said:

"Today was pretty good! I did some laps on my practice bike to get my head in the game and then at lunch time we headed out on the superbike for the first time, which was good to get my brain back up to speed! The bike was very similar to what we ran at Knockhill last year and it felt really good, everything was pretty plain sailing and it all seemed to work well which is great considering we've all been on hold for four months!

"I did 80 laps in the end, which I was pretty pleased with as even though the rain ended the day early, I had a good feeling on the bike so I'm looking forward to getting back out in the next few weeks."

O'Halloran said:

"It was great to be back on the superbike after four months off! I really enjoy riding around Knockhill so it was great to be back on the R1 today. We got through quite a bit and the bike was feeling good, which is good after such a long time away. It feels as though we've been building towards this moment for a long time and now we've been out on the bike the 2020 season feels a lot closer!

"Thanks to the team for organising today, it's really important to get a shakedown test after such a long time off the bike, now we're back up to speed we can focus on getting the bike where it needs to be ahead of Round 1, but early signs are promising, just as they were back in March!"

Team Owner Steve Rodgers commented:

“It's a huge relief to get the guys back on track as there were points this year where we wondered whether we'd be going racing at all. It's been four months since the guys rode the R1 superbike, so the instructions from our side was to be steady away, get a feel for the speed again and we've got a few more tests lined up so we can continue the work we started back in March with the new bike.

"We can't wait to get going now and even though there's just under a month to go, it'll come around quick!"