Moto Rapido Ducati’s Danny Buchan was the second fastest rider in the MCE British Superbike free practice session this afternoon.
The former Pirelli National Superstock 1000 champion was only 0.1 seconds off the fastest lap of the day and a 1’48.324 was more than enough to propel the Panigale into P2.
The good pace and lap times were down to a ‘radical setting’ that his crew have been working on and they felt brave today, especially with the dry track time in the second free practice session.
It did help that the team had a solid test at the 300 circuit a few weeks ago and were able to set-up the Ducati to suit the flat circuit. Unfortunately rain blighted the end of that test, but this afternoon in much better condtiions they were able to put into practice the new settings, and it paid off.
“It was a good first day, we had a few steps forward, really coming from the test here. We left the test with a reasonable setting and lots of data. We thought we want to make a good change and we had that change ready to go for the Snett test in the last session which was rained off,” said Moto Rapido Ducati’s Team Boss, Steve Moore, speaking to bikesportnews.com.
“So we had to mothball that whole idea of setup because we knew it would not work at Knockhill, then come back here and try it in FP1. Then it rained a bit out here but we went brave and put in a radical setting in it for Snetterton because it is a flat track and we can get away with things that we can't do at other tracks, but this should set up nicely for Thruxton.
“So Danny was either going to love it or hate it. We got a bit carried away at first and we had to reel the setting back in a bit but it is good, and is going in the right direction and the radically setting works. We changed things quite dramatically. It was either going to be a disaster or work, and it worked and we did a lot of maths on it and it worked out quite well.”