FPR rider Steve Martin did not have the weekend he had hoped with the new developments of the FP-1 triple engine.
However he is as upbeat as ever and already looking forward to Monza. Here is what happened, in his own words, at Valencia...
We are back in our apartment on Lake Lugano and happy to be back in Europe. Over the last month things have been pretty hectic so we have decided to have a couple of quiet days to ourselves which has given me a bit of time to reflect on the Valencia race meeting.
After spending three years of my WSBK career developing the Pirellis whilst racing against the other tyre manufactures I have learnt that it's not constructive to sit here and dwell on a disappointing Valencia race weekend. Instead I like to look at what we did, what we should have done and what we can change for the next one – I hate hindsight!
We started the weekend on the new specification engines, which I tested at Phillip Island. Phillip Island is a top end circuit where you are never really off the throttle and the extra power of the new engine worked awesome around there, as the engine has less tourque but more up top. Compare that to Valencia, which is a tight twisty circuit where you are off and on the throttle a lot more, and therefore you need more in acceleration than you need in the top end.
On Friday and Saturday we tried to maximise the newer engine for the Valencia circuit by running with higher revs into the corners so that I could get the much-needed acceleration out of the corners. This meant the bike was more inclined to back into the corners and we spent a lot of time changing the set-up to overcome this problem. But the reality is, as we found out, that we need to do more work with the PETRONAS engine development team for this engine on tight tracks.
