PBM Aprilia’s Michael Laverty set his fastest ever lap of Sepang during the first official MotoGP tests and says that chasing down the brand new production Hondas of Nicky Hayden and Scott Redding are realistic targets for 2014.

Laverty spent three days using the older-spec ART engines with which he finished last season before they went back to Aprilia for a refresh and upgrade in time for Qatar. He may well miss the second set of Malaysia tests in order for the team to finalise engine and electronics specs and fiinish building second bikes for himself and team-mate Broc Parkes to ship to the final tests in the desert.

Laverty was able to consistently lap in the 2'03s and says he is happy with that, given that Aleix Espargaro was only able to dip into the mid-2'03s once in last year's race on a faster spec of engine. He should find himself equipped with that spec for Qatar and may well then get an upgrade to a pnuematic-valved motor around June.

“We made good progress on the second day and the morning of third but in the afternon went a little in wrong direction. There was a bit of pace left in us but we decided to gather information instead. The performance was promising as we were running down the mileage on last year’s engines,” said Laverty, speaking to bikesportnews.com from Australia.

“I think with the newer spec, we won’t be a kick in the arse off the production Hondas.They weren’t too far in front at Sepang and they’re using fresh engines so I think they are a realistic target and we can give them a hard time.

We made a good step forward with the electronics, especially with traction control and corner entry. We also smoothed out the intial throttle response too. I am able now to brake a lot deeper and can be more aggressive with the throttle on exit so most of it was positive. We do need to make it turn a little better on the side of the tyre but it’s a nice bike to ride now.”