The plan for the tests was to work on handling in general and getting a good base set-up. I had already been fast on the bike, but just needed to find greater consistency. Valencia was a difficult test, as it was only the second time I'd ridden there on a superbike and the first time, last November, was so wet that it didn't really count. So the test in March was my first real experience at Valencia and I found it quite difficult as although I was pushing really hard, I just couldn't find a set-up I was happy with and struggled to get my lap times down.
Then things turned around and at the Misano test, two weeks after, I got within 1.3 seconds of Steve's time and managed to iron out some of my previous set-up difficulties. That was the first time I'd ever ridden at Misano and so spent the first day learning the track. Then I just really got my head down and had a good think about what we needed to do to make the bike work for me and we made some really good progress. My lap times still weren't as fast as I had hoped but I had closed the significant gap between me and the front runners and came away from that test feeling very positive about rest of this season.
I had a decent base set-up for the Valencia race last weekend and my aim was to finish each session within the top twenty. Having had a number of trouble free days of testing beforehand, Friday was very frustrating as, although chassis felt great, we struggled with niggling problems all day. We made some changes to the bike that evening and Saturday was a complete turn around with me having probably my best session of the season so far in the morning. I was hoping to take that a step further in the afternoon but we lost a lot of grip as the temperature changed.
