Camier holds faith in Red Bull Honda progress

Leon Camier says he’s gained a confidence boost from the progress made at the pre-season tests at Jerez and Portimao with his new Red Bull Honda package but accepts plenty of development gains are still required to catch the front-runners.

The British rider makes a World Superbike switch to the Ten Kate Racing-run squad for 2018 after three years with MV Agusta and has been catching the eye with some quick laps at both tests. Camier’s 1m 41.623s on the final day of the Portimao test handed him second on the timesheet, albeit using the softer Pirelli qualifying tyres, and concedes he needs to find more performance over a race distance to maintain a podium challenge.

At the Portimao test Red Bull Honda had been expected to switch to Magneti Marelli electronics but after a delay in parts and set-up Camier stuck with the Cosworth package to avoid any drastic changes with limited track time before the 2018 season opener.

The 31-year-old rider is now eager to apply further gains at the final pre-season test at Phillip Island ahead of the first round at the Australian circuit on the 23-25^th February.

“It was a good test all in all, we made a lot of progress and smoothing things out as we go,” Camier said. “We did some slightly longer runs as well to understand how the bike's going to work towards the middle and end of the race, I was pretty comfortable with that.

“We still have some areas we'd like to work on to improve our race pace and lap time on the race tyre but it's all progressing. We had a good feeling on the qualifying tyre as well so, as I said, all in all pretty happy and looking forward to getting to the first race and getting started.”