Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty spent his first day back in World Superbikes struggling to turn his RSV4-RF, leaving the 2013 runner-up down in 11th and facing Superpole 1.
The Northern Irishman returns to WorldSBK after two years in MotoGP with the Aspar team, and is back on the bike he so very nearly secured the 2013 title with.
Testing in Europe went well, but the RSV4-RF began to cause problems for Laverty when he hit the Phillip Island circuit for two days of running earlier in the week.
Laverty began the day down in 15th on a 1m31.7s, but improved in the afternoon by half a second to miss out on the top 10 by just a tenth. Though gutted to miss a place in SP2 by such a tiny margin, he is still looking on the bright side.
“I only missed out by about one tenth, I was pushing hard but it was only for 10th position. But at least we’ll get an extra 15 minutes on track,” Laverty said following FP2.
The main issue at present for the Aprilia rider is cornering; the RSV4-RF isn’t handling well through the quick turns, and this is a major setback at a fast and flowing circuit such as Phillip Island.
The team made slight progress from FP1 to FP2 in rectifying this problem, but Laverty admits that more work is needed. The Aprilia rider will try a few different chassis tweaks, as well as changes to the bike’s electronics ahead of qualifying tomorrow morning
“We want to try a couple of things with the electronics and how the engine braking is working, but also chassis-wise,” he added.
“In the fast corners we just don’t have a bike that turns well, and in Phillip Island that’s not a good thing. It’s really costing me a lot but it’s been a good day today.
“I’ve been able to follow some riders and I’m really starting to understand the extent of my problems. So now we know where we have to work, and we made some small progress. But when we’re one second off, we need to be making bigger leaps than that.”
Team-mate Lorenzo Savadori faired much better, progressing straight through to the second part of qualifying in seventh on today’s combine times with a lap of 1m30.847s.
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