YART Yamaha top pre-season testing at Circuit Paul Ricard

05-09-2019

YART Yamaha top pre-season testing at Circuit Paul Ricard

The YART Yamaha EWC Team enjoyed a very successful two-day pre-season test this week at the Paul Ricard circuit in France, ahead of the 24-hour Bol D’Or race which will open the 2020 Endurance World Championship. Testing on 3-4 September, regular YART riders Marvin Fritz and Niccolò Canepa were joined on the YZF-R1 at the recently resurfaced Circuit Paul Ricard by Frenchman Loris Baz, standing in for Broc Parkes at the opening round while the Australian competes in the penultimate race of the Asia Road Racing Championship in Sepang.

A solid opening day on Tuesday saw the team top the timesheets comfortably with the #7 bike, with YART returnee Baz immediately on the pace and setting a lap of 1’54.601 to end the day fastest, 0.522 ahead of the second-placed team.

Wednesday saw lap times tumble even further. The team was once again in dominant form, with Canepa setting a blistering 1’54.154 lap that was not bettered all day, coming close to last year’s outright lap record of 1’54.007 set by Randy de Puniet. Fritz and Baz enjoyed another strong day to finish just a few tenths off their teammate’s time. After completing a clean sweep in the final pre-season test the team head to the first race of the season in promising form.

The teams now have less than three weeks to wait until the 2019/2020 EWC season commences with the Bol D’Or on 20-22 September at the Circuit Paul Ricard.

Niccolò Canepa

I’m really happy about these two days of testing. Loris was immediately fast and this is good for the race. It’s not easy to replace a rider like Broc Parkes!

We improved the bike each day and we worked a lot on the electronic settings. This helped us to improve the lap time and out consistency. We also did a long run with Marvin, and again with very good lap times.

We are in a good position now, and we are all ready for the Bol D’Or later this month.

Marvin Fritz

We had a really good test, the weather was great all week and it was really nice to have Loris with us. He was immediately good with the bike, and myself and Niccolo were already faster than last year.

The resurfacing at Paul Ricard is good to ride, and we worked hard on the setup and also with the new tyres. We all did really good lap times today, and all set the same time of 1’54.4. We got a lot of laps in and the bike is feeling great.

As a team we are all really well prepared, our long run pace was good and we are in a much better position than last year. I just want to say thank you for an amazing job from the team and from my teammates.

Loris Baz

I’m really happy with how the test went. It was great to be back with YART for the first time since 2011, there are some familiar faces still and I had a warm welcome from the whole team which was really nice. It was great to ride with Niccolo and Marvin also. We worked really well together, and I didn’t know the track when I arrived so they helped me a lot there.

We did a great job as a team to set up the bike, we had the same focus for the direction of the setup, we knew what we had to improve and found a position that suited us all. All week we did good lap times and had good pace, which is always positive, even though it is just testing.

It’s important to have a strong pace for all three riders, I can’t wait for the race and it will be a good challenge to do a 24-hour race. I want to thank YART again for the opportunity, thanks to the whole team and of course to my teammates for this week.

Mandy Kainz

The test was very good for us. We know that we have very strong pace, we didn’t use any qualifying tyres so all our lap times were done on race tyres, which is very positive for our race pace. We know that the other teams had to really push with the qualifiers to come close to our times, so there is a really good feeling for the race.

Loris and support rider Karel Hanika both set really good times, even Karel was in cruising mode to and was able to do a 1’55 lap. All the riders are in a good place with the bike, we need a little bit of luck as always but with the competition struggling to match our pace, I am hopeful of a good result at the Bol D’Or.