Team Suzuki Press Office – April 25.
Team SUZUKI ECSTAR stayed in Jerez de la Frontera after the Spanish GP for one day of official IRTA testing today, enabling the team to revise the information collected during the race weekend and also try several solutions to improve the GSX-RR’s performance.
The latest introduction were the ‘winglets’ which were equipped on both Aleix Espargaró’s and Maverick Viñales’ machines. After their first appearance in Friday’s Jerez Free Practice on Espargaró’s #41 bike, they have been tested intensively today in order to better understand their influence in the aerodynamics, overall performance and their feeling with both riders; an issue that will be investigated further in the coming weeks.
Today, an important and intense job was completed in improving the issues reported by the riders in the previous races, although there haven’t been any technical innovations introduced as the job focused in exploring new ways in set-up in order to find better traction and less rear wheel spin.
Team SUZUKI ECSTAR Technicians and both riders managed to work with the three front wheel compounds taken to the circuit by Michelin, giving the French tyre manufacturer important feedback and also more experience which will be useful for the next three races.
Davide Brivio – Team Manager:
“It’s always good when we have the possibility to stay at the track for one more day to revise what happened in the racing weekend and have a back-to-back comparison. This helps us a lot in building our knowledge about all the technical aspects. With Maverick we managed to find some different set-ups that may have probably helped us yesterday in the race, we worked on a front tyre we didn’t choose for the weekend, while here we managed to make it work more efficiently. This is useful because it’s the same tyre we will have available to us in the next three races.
“Aleix as well had positive improvements, again in the settings, and he is now consistently close to the top riders. It was important for us to give him back the confidence with the machine: He with his crew are working intensely to recover from the difficulties he suffered pre-season and I’m happy to see him competitive again, as he can be. Back to the tyres; we also tested two new tyres for the rear and it was helpful to report our feedback to Michelin, which they will use for future development. After this positive day we gained more confidence, so it’s easier for us to look towards Le Mans with renewed enthusiasm.”
Maverick Viñales:
“The feeling with the winglets is that their help is not a huge improvement, but for sure they may help in certain situations. They will not cut tenths in the time attack, but they allow me to ride a little more comfortably and this is a very big help over the race distance. Our main priority was to work on the set-up, I need to reduce the spinning and to find a better traction as Le Mans will be a very demanding track in terms of hard braking and acceleration. I tried the new tyres for the rear but mainly I liked the soft front. Over the weekend we couldn’t find the best efficacy with them, so I didn’t use them, but today with some new set-up they work very well and we will try to adopt it more consistently.”
Aleix Espargaró:
“Basically today we tried the winglets again after their debut on Friday and we focused a huge amount of work on different set-up possibilities. The electronics are another issue we explored more, as yesterday in the race I had some trouble with the traction and we tried to find some solution for it. The good thing is that I used only three tyres to make 75 laps today, as we needed to further investigate the potential of the GSX-RR when the tyres got really worn, and the timesheets confirmed that we can be performing even in those conditions, and with a 25-lap rear tyre. I tried the new Michelin front tyres, I’m not feeling so good with the new intermediate tyre; at the moment the tyre we used in race (the same as the eight top riders) seems to me to have the bigger potential and feeling. We had the chance to make a back-to-back test with the winglets: they are not a huge improvement, but they help a little: If we can get even a very small advantage out of them, for sure it was worthy to try them. Finally today we had the objective to find a better traction from the rear and it looks like we achieved the result, this make me happy and confident thinking ahead to Le Mans, where traction will be much important.”
Jerez Testing Results:
1. Marc MARQUEZ, Repsol Honda Team - 1:39.313 - 11 / 91
2. Jorge LORENZO, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 1:39.332 - +0.019 - 26 / 59
3. Maverick VIÑALES, Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 1:39.536 - +0.223 - 14 / 91
4. Valentino ROSSI, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP - 1:39.632 - +0.319 - 50 / 52
5. Dani PEDROSA, Repsol Honda Team - 1:39.646 - +0.333 - 65 / 76
6. Aleix ESPARGARO, Team SUZUKI ECSTAR - 1:39.682 - +0.369 - 8 / 71
7. Cal CRUTCHLOW, LCR Honda - 1:39.812 - +0.499 - 79 / 82
8. Andrea IANNONE, Ducati Team - 1:39.879 - +0.566 - 10 / 55
9. Pol ESPARGARO, Monster Yamaha Tech 3 - 1:39.942 - +0.629 - 40 / 62
10. Andrea DOVIZIOSO, Ducati Team - 1:40.027 - +0.714 - 46 / 50
