Two ideal days at Jerez make for a positive Team HRC test session

The two-day test session that Team HRC has completed at the the Andalusian track of Jerez de la Frontera in Spain was facilitated by ideal weather conditions. 

Only a little early morning fog on day one delayed proceedings by half an hour, but for the rest of the time cloudless skies and warm weather (air temp 24 C°  track temp 35 C°), allowed Alvaro Bautista to make the most of his track time and work hard with his technicians from 10am to 6pm.

The significant amount of information and data collected during what is the final test of the season for Team HRC will be used by the Japanese engineers as they move forward with their development work. The goal is to continue the positive performance trend seen in the final races of 2020, where Bautista consistently demonstrated top-five pace.

Alvaro Bautista

“Basically, we have carried out back-to-back tests regarding the electronics, setup and various areas of the bike, something we can’t do during race weekends or at least not in a comprehensive way. We’ve compared many settings and collected a lot of information to help steer development for next year. Although, on the one hand we were lucky to be able to complete our racing season, albeit a limited one, on the other hand it’s clear that we’ve been particularly penalised by the Covid-19 situation, considering our brand-new project. We definitely needed more time on track. But we know where we need to improve and must first fix a few things with our existing package. The bike is good at this point, but there is still room to improve what we already have, with the electronics and so on. Other areas we can improve on for next year include turning and rear grip, both in braking and acceleration. We have worked a lot on this, and I think it’s been a very useful test.”