Fuente : Yamaha Racing
http://www.yamaha-racing.com/

YAMAHA RACING:Pitt leads the Yamahas at Brands

/noticias.info/ Yamaha’s superbike riders enjoyed a good opening day for this weekend’s eighth round of the Superbike World Championship at the Brands Hatch circuit in the United Kingdom.

With the morning practice session affected by rain, Yamaha Motor Italia riders Andrew Pitt and Noriyuki Haga used the afternoon qualifying session to work on machine settings for Sunday’s two 25-lap races around the undulating English circuit. Despite being the team’s first visit to the circuit with the YZF-R1, both riders declared themselves happy with the base machine settings, setting the sixth and 12th fastest times despite opting to save their soft qualifying tyres for tomorrow’s final session.



Pitt rode strongly to end the day sixth with a best of 1:28.023, less than a second behind fastest man Troy Corser (Suzuki). The Australian run consistently fast in both the morning and afternoon sessions and expects to find further improvement tomorrow, as the team changes the gearbox settings on his YZF-R1.

Team-mate Haga, a double winner here last year and winner last time out at Brno, ended the day 12th, comfortable in the knowledge that he will have two qualifying tyres at his disposal tomorrow. Nitro Nori, the fans’ favourite at Brands, recorded a best time of 1:28.541 and is confident of improving tomorrow.


Fellow Japanese Norick Abe had an encouraging time on his first visit to Brands. The Yamaha Motor France rider ended the day in 18th place, ruing the lack of dry running in the morning session but encouraged by his performance on the tricky to learn circuit. Like his colleagues in the Yamaha Motor Italia team, Abe is confident that improved settings and added circuit knowledge can help improve his time and propel him into the top-16 superpole session, a position already occupied by his team-mate, Sebastien Gimbert, who ended today in 14th position.

Andrew Pitt (Yamaha Motor Italia)
“It’s my first time here for three years and the circuit has changed a little bit, but I enjoy it here and I’m pretty happy with how it’s gone today. We’ve consistently been up the front and I’m happy with the way the bike’s feeling. It’s our first time here with the R1, so we had to guess a bit at the settings. We’ve got it pretty good but the gearbox (ratios) isn’t perfect so that’s something that we’ll change for tomorrow.”

Noriyuki Haga (Yamaha Motor Italia)
“Always race settings is most important and as normal we worked on finding a good race set-up and, basically, it is ok. Of course, we will still make lots of changes for tomorrow and I am sure that we can improve some more in the morning.”

Norick Abe (Yamaha Motor France)
“This is my first time at Brands Hatch and I am quite happy with how it went today. This is a very special circuit with many difficult corners to learn. Normally when I go to a new course I am in position 20-something on the first day, so 18th is not so bad – especially as this morning’s session was wet and I could not try many things. Of course we will make changes to the bike overnight, especially to the gearbox settings, and I think that we can make big improvements tomorrow.”

Sebastien Gimbert (Yamaha Motor France)
“I’m feeling a lot fitter now than I did at Brno. My leg is now healed and I hope for a good result this weekend. I rode here with the R1 last year, so I know the circuit. Tomorrow we will make a few small changes and I hope that we can qualify for the superpole.”

Claudio Consonni (Racing Manager – Yamaha Motor Italia)
“The team is quite confident about this weekend. Both Andrew and Noriyuki have made consistent times and were able to do good lap times without using the qualifying tyre. Both riders have a good feeling from the bike and we will make some more changes tonight which we hope will improve the package even more.” notas_de_prensa_archivo