Bridewell sets BSB testing pace in Spain
Tommy Bridewell emerged quickest from the second day of British Superbike pre-season testing at Cartagena, ahead of Milwaukee Yamaha team-mate Josh Brookes.
The British rider, who joins the Shaun Muir-helmed squad for a full season of BSB racing in 2014 following a strong guest showing towards the end of last year, was the only rider to dip into the 1min 34secs bracket as he set the pace by a comfortable margin.
His best unofficial time of 1min 34.3secs left him eight tenths up on new team-mate Brookes, with Tyco Suzuki pairing John Hopkins and Josh Waters following in third and fourth on identical 1min 35.5secs lap times.
"Overall it has been really good, after having five months off the bike it was just me sorting myself out, getting my lines in and I feel like we achieved a lot better lap time than we would have expected so that was good," Bridewell told the official BSB website. "The day was a bit more productive, we did a lot more work with the bike and we concentrated on some new linkages that we have got.
"In the final session we made another change and ran a further link and did a race distance on a new tyre, the Pirelli 17" SC0, the tyres worked well and we got some feedback which is what we wanted to see with the Yamaha. We made some more changes, softened the front and at the end I did a 1:34.3 lap and to be honest I am very happy with that.
"Every session we went faster and today I had been looking for a stronger improvement and we found it. I feel really comfortable on the bike, it is working amazing; Pete (Jennings) and the Milwaukee team are working well, and I am enjoying it which is producing the lap times."
Also on track were Martin Jessopp on the Riders Motorcycles BMW, Ian Hutchinson on the FFX Yamaha and Jakub Smrz on the Millsport Ducati, the trio just one, two and three tenths adrift of the Tyco Suzukis respectively.
Cartagena pre-season testTimes supplied by teams
1. Tommy Bridewell Milwaukee Yamaha 1min 34.3s
2. Josh Brookes Milwaukee Yamaha 1min 35.1s
3. John Hopkins Tyco Suzuki 1min 35.5s
4. Josh Waters Tyco Suzuki 1min 35.5s
5. Martin Jessopp Riders Motorcycles BMW 1min 35.6s
6. Ian Hutchinson FFX Yamaha 1min 35.7s
7. Jakub Smrz - Millsport Ducati 1min 35.8s
