The second and final day of the
Ducati Xerox Team's two-day test at the Eurospeedway Lausitz in Germany was
cut short this afternoon as heavy rain lashed the circuit most of the day.
Régis Laconi and James Toseland managed to put in a full day's
dry-weather testing on the Wednesday, but bad weather conditions meant that
none of the riders from the various WSBK teams present for the testing
session could improve their times today. Yesterday the Ducati Xerox Team
focussed on learning the track and general set-up work in the morning,
before testing tyres for the championship's one-make supplier Pirelli in the
afternoon, while today the two riders concentrated on wet-weather tyres and
set-up following a half-an-hour dry 'window' first thing in the morning. The
top times recorded by both riders yesterday were 1m40.4s for Laconi, and
1m40.9s for Toseland on race tyres.
"Today it rained really a lot and the track became a bit dangerous
because there was not much grip" declared Laconi. "But we worked really well
these two days, despite the difficult conditions. Yesterday in particular I
put in a lot of laps and we fitted the large 200mm rear tyre I used during
the Misano weekend, and the results were very good."
"The first day was a bit disappointing because we didn't make much
headway with the new front tyre and when I did have a decent front, the day
was up and I was a bit behind with my time" commented Toseland. "Today I was
the quickest before the rain and was looking forward to improving the rest
of the day, but it didn't happen. Then when I did get confident in the rain,
I took a bit of a dive while trying to break the two-minute barrier. It was
good we did a lot of testing in the rain because it might be like that here
in September."
This year World Superbike returns to the impressive speedway facility
in the former East Germany for the first time in three years. The 4.265 km
Lausitzring has twice been the venue for the German Round of the
championship, in 2001 (when the wins went to Colin Edwards (Honda) and Troy
Bayliss (Ducati) and the following year, when Ducati's Australian rider
scored the double. This year's race, round 10 in the 12-round calendar, will
be held on September 11.
Unofficial Times:
- 1. Vermeulen (Honda) - 1m40.1s
- 2. Laconi (Ducati Xerox) - 1m40.4s
- 3. Lanzi (Ducati SC) - 1m40.6s
- 4. Toseland (Ducati Xerox) - 1m40.9s
- 5. Muggeridge (Honda) - 1m41.2s
- 6. Walker (Kawasaki) - 1m41.3s
- 7. Martin (Petronas) - 1m42.0s
- 8. Riba (Kawasaki) - 1m42.3s
