Defending Bennetts British Superbike champions, VisionTrack Ducati, continued their pre-season testing with thethird official BSB test at Oulton Park which saw Josh Brookes and Christian Iddon enjoy some dry track time at the Cheshire circuit today.

With very cold temperatures and wet weather badly affecting the previous two tests at Silverstone and Snetterton, the sunshine was a welcome relieffor Paul Bird’s two riders as they continued their preparations for the opening round which also takes place at Oulton Park later next month.

After sitting out the Snetterton test to allow the finger injury he sustained at Silverstone to heal, reigning champion Brookes was fastest out ofthe blocks in the opening session, setting quickest time aboard the factory supported VisionTrack Ducati Panigale V4 R at 1:35.347s on his verylast lap. Iddon, in his second year with the Penrith-based team, set fifth fastest time with a best lap of 1:36.172 to get the ball rolling.

Session two just after lunch saw the PBM team continue their pre-season development work on set-up with Bedfordshire-based Aussie Brookes ending upin seventh place with teammate Iddon, originally from Stockport but now living on Tyneside, one place further back as he improved his lap time.

The final session late this afternoon turned out to be the fastest with track conditions almost ideal and saw Brookes lower his lap time to 1:34.924to end up fifth with Iddon continuing to improve his speed also and although he ended the session in 12th place, he dropped his lap time to a bestof 1:35.412.

The team now moves on to the final test in the official schedule with takes place at Donington Park on June 8th prior to the opening round of the BennettsBritish Superbike Championship takes place over the weekend of 25/27 June at Oulton Park.


Josh Brookes:

“The day was positive in as much as the finger injury didn’t really affect me, but regarding the actual test, I felt the track was a little slower than last year as it hadn’t been used very much. We put last year’s settings into the bike and straight away I was fastest but then we tried a few different things, including the new SCX tyre, and the changes didn’t really help us go faster. I learned a lot about the new tyre which was one of the main objects today so that information was invaluable. But we know we have a good base setting on the bike and these tests are to experiment a little but the whole idea is to evaluate our package. Even though I wasn’t fastest overall, I’m happy with where we are at and we got plenty of dry laps in.”


Christian Iddon:

“Today was really beneficial in getting through a big workload and we came away having done that which was really good. I did a full race run in the middle session and set my fastest lap on lap 17 which bodes well for an 18-lap race round here. In the final session, we needed to try a setting which we’d run previously and just wanted to eliminate certain things so despite being further down the order than I’d have liked, we needed to do that experiment and have learned a lot from it. I’m feeling very happy and positive, and the plan seems to be coming together so we’ll stick at it and now look forward to Donington.”

John Mowatt, Team Co-Ordinator:

“It was finally good to get some decent dry laps in at a track we know suits us, so the plan was to define our base setting and then try a few different ideas and of course, get some data on running the new Pirelli tyre. Josh showed what he and the bike are capable of by topping the opening session and from there, we just needed to work through things. Same for Christian, he gradually improved his lap times in all three sessions and prioritised getting data for the opening races rather than setting a one-off fast lap. We now have a lot more information to work with which we will continue at Donington.”