Michael Laverty ended 2015 with a victory for Tyco BMW at the Brands Hatch season finale, and ahead of the team's first test of the new season in Spain next month, he is already feeling confident of picking up where he left off last year.

Laverty remains with the Northern Irish team for the second consecutive season and believes that the continuity puts him in a perfect position heading into testing and the opening round of the season at Silverstone in April.

Laverty said: 

"I am looking forward to the season; I am definitely in the most confident frame of mind I have ever been in; I have the continuity of the same team, same bike, and I have never really had that in this championship before. I have always changed, but I know I have a good bike and a good team and I am really happy where I am.

"It is going to be a heck of a season, looking at the grid and the bikes that are out there - it is a world class field and world class riders. If you are winning a BSB race you certainly aren't hanging about. I have been working hard physically to be ready for a tough season ahead and I am expecting to have to fight every inch of the way to try and win the races, never mind the championship! I firmly believe we have a good shot at it this year to win that title."

The team switched to BMW power for 2015 and Laverty admits that the development of the new bike took longer than he anticipated, but believes that the hard work the team put in last season will give them a strong foundation to kick off the new championship.

"I won the last race of 2015, I wasn't the fastest on track that day, but I just fought harder to win it," Laverty added. "We have work to do to polish off some of those little areas to make sure we are the fastest on track as well as the ones with the biggest heart.

"I am taking a lot of positives into this year, 12 months is a very short time in this game and when I came in last year I had a lot of expectation on my shoulders, but with the change of manufacturer it took us longer than we expected. My team-mate at the time, Tommy Bridewell, got on with it better than I did to begin with, but as the season went on I really started to gel with the bike and I adjusted a few things to suit me better and experience came into play. I then found form and finished strong at the end of the year, so I expect to start strong this year and keep that level all season long.

"We are hoping the continuity from last year going into this season compared to some of our rivals will give us a big advantage; obviously James Ellison is in a similar boat where he has stayed with the same team but Kawasaki have modified the bike. We have the identical bike we had last year so when we roll out in Cartagena we will pretty much start with the bike that I won the last race on at Brands Hatch. There won't be anything different on it as we were still finding our feet with it and learning new things even at the end of the season.

"We still have a bit of an evolution process with what we had at the end of last year with things we tried at the start of the year and then binned, need to be re-evaluated because the bike changed so much as the year went on so we have a lot of parts to re-evaluate first and then we can start adding some new components in."

"I have got a bit of a game plan as to how the season goes if you look at the schedule; the meaty part of the season is after June really and we have a steady run in for the early part and I think where we are at with the bike now, and all of the work we did last year, puts us in quite a comfortable position so we can use this time to really evaluate what we have got and learn the ins and outs of the Tyco BMW.

"When it comes down to the races they are won by the fine details because there are so many guys out there who can win that it is the minute details that make the difference so understanding what each change will do to the bike, to the tyre wear and everything else is a big learning progress in this game so we have to do the hard work now in these early months and then hopefully at the later part of the season, there are no question marks and we know what everything is like and we are ready to roll."