Stefan Bradl tests Honda WorldSBK Fireblade SP

The Honda WorldSBK Team has completed the first test of the winter season this week at Aragón. This has been the first outing on board the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machine for new signing Stefan Bradl, who with Nicky Hayden completes the team’s line-up for the 2017 FIM Superbike World Championship.

The two days on track were blessed with glorious weather which, despite low temperatures in the morning, allowed all teams to make the most of the 7-hour per day track-time available to them.

Using the same machine he raced for the whole 2016 season, Hayden tried some new components with an eye to the future, including new electronics complying to next year’s regulations, a new 2017-spec front fork from Öhlins and new brake components.

Hayden’s 1’50.8s was the fastest lap-time among the 132 recorded by the 35-year-old American over the course of the two days.

Only a few days after the end of his MotoGP season, Stefan Bradl joined the Honda WorldSBK Team on track for the first time as he got to grips with the Fireblade machine, as well as with Pirelli tyres and steel brakes. The former Moto2 Champion quickly got up to speed and was able to start working with the team on some early set-up changes. Despite not focusing on pure speed in what was his very first experience of production-based motorcycle racing, Bradl clocked a fastest time in 1’51.1 and completed a considerable amount of laps (134), which included two encouraging long runs.

Nicky Hayden

“Well, I think overall we have been pretty fortunate with the conditions: it wasn’t beach weather, but for being late November we’ve had a couple of really nice afternoons. We did a good number of laps and were able to go through some stuff; of course, we kept working with the 2016 bike trying to develop what we still can. Yesterday we spent a lot of time evaluating Pirelli tyres with a couple of positives from that side of things. We worked on what we think will be the same on next year’s bike but for other things like the clutch, for example, we aren’t sure yet whether it’ll be the one we’ll use in 2017. But we did work on brakes and suspension settings that we can put to good use for the future. Overall we can be happy with what we’ve done.”

Stefan Bradl

“It has been a busy two days of testing. Almost everything was new to me so we had a lot to learn, but I think we’ve done a good job. I was able to adapt to the bike quite quickly and the two long runs definitely taught me a lot, as they gave me a good feeling for the future and told me how to modify my style with regards to tyre wear. We tried a couple of things with the front and rear suspensions as well as with the geometry of the bike; we played around with the set-up, found our own way with things, and the feeling improved outing after outing. It’s been a very useful test to know how the bike and the team work, and I think everyone can be happy with what we’ve done so far.”

Pieter Breddels – Technical Manager

“Today with Stefan we kept working on the front of the bike, changing springs and positions for preload. In the end he was happy with what we found, so we turned our attention to the rear of the bike. We then did a long run and that turned out to be really a good one: he was lapping in the low 1m 51s area and after we put a new set of tyres he did another long run, in which he set his fastest lap for the test – and then he matched it again! We compared the two bikes with different setups and he also did some practice starts, which again were positive. After only two days of testing, his performance has been remarkable. Nicky continued with the programme we scheduled for the winter. He tried some things but the breakthrough came when we changed the suspension settings at the rear. We evaluated some modifications to the rear brake but we were not fully happy with it, so we’ll continue working on that area. Overall we had some interesting results and now we can look forward to Jerez next week.”