STP Motorsport has gone some way to prove that big-budget testing may not be the way forward as its MV Agusta only came out of the crate three weeks ago and was able to be on the Brtish Superbike Cup pace during Brands practice.
The team was extremely pleased with the track time that it was able to get in on Friday and Saturday before the snow arrived with a vengeance. Finishing third quickest out of the Cup riders in free practice on Friday, only 0.23 seconds off the fastest cup rider and qualifying in sixth place on Saturday confirmed the potential of both the MV Agusta F4 312RR and rider.
Warwick Nowland, Team Manager: “Given the fact that we only received the 2008 bike from Italy three weeks ago, and we have not been able to do any pre-season testing, or any meaningful work on the bike to improve performance, I was extremely pleased with the way that the bike performed on Friday and Saturday.
Brands Hatch was, in effect, a test for us and we needed to explore where we were, get the basic set-up sorted and give Chris [Burns] some meaningful time on the bike. In that respect it was time well spent and to be as close as we were to John Laverty and James Buckingham was a real bonus.
“The bike is basically a Superstock machine with slick tyres on at the moment so the really encouraging thing is the knowledge that we have major power improvements to come, another 20–30 hp is relatively easy to achieve. In addition, we can now start to remove some of the 35 kilos of excess weight that the stock bike carries. We will also be working on the electronics package in the next couple of weeks.”
Chris Burns: “It has been a long winter without the opportunity to test the bike so it was good to get some track time in at Brands Hatch and it was reassuring to know that the bike is as quick as it is straight out of the box.
"The potential that we have with the MV Agusta is immense and once we tap into the extra power that we know id available I am confident that this is going to be a good season for STP Motorsport and MV Agusta. As we now have three bikes to call on we can, weather permitting, get some more testing under our belts before Thruxton and continue to develop the bike."
