The Yamaha Sterilgarda World Superbike Team headed straight off to Imola following last weekend’s race at Misano, and today completed a two day test in the sweltering Italian sunshine. The team spent the two days testing further areas of electronics, including traction control, wheelie control and launch control. They also worked to find improvements in the chassis, in particular the balance of the bike.

At the end of the test it was Cal Crutchlow who came out fastest of the World Superbike riders, recording a time nearly half a second faster than closest rivals.

Cal Crutchlow, Yamaha Sterilgarda World Superbike Team (1st, 1’47.478, 125laps)
“I’m happy with result of the test but we’ve got to win the races as well. We’ve tried a lot of different settings here, finally the best are close to how we started at the beginning. Hopefully over the summer break we’ll get some new parts and make more of a difference. We’re going to Brno with good confidence and we’ll take away from this test some good positives.”

James Toseland, Yamaha Sterilgarda World Superbike Team (11th, 1’49.031, 127laps)
“It’s been a bit of a frustrating test for me. We’ve been concentrating over the two days on trying various different settings to try and maximise the grip on the bike as opposed to focussing on getting the fastest lap time. At the end of it I don’t feel I’ve managed to get closer so I’ve been struggling a bit.”

Massimo Meregalli, Yamaha Sterilgarda World Superbike Team
“We tested quite a lot of different things here at Imola, including various areas of electronics, we’ve also looked at the chassis to see what we can do to improve the balance. Both riders also spent some time testing some new tyres that Pirelli bought to the test. Cal finished fastest at the end and put in an impressive performance. James was not as fast so we need to look at our data and see what we can do to improve this.”