Bayliss more comfortable at home track

Bayliss more comfortable at home track

Troy Bayliss says he felt much more comfortable riding at Phillip Island on Thursday than he had done during three torrid days at Sepang last week. The Australian rider again struggled with the set-up of his Honda RC211V but explained that his intimate knowledge of his home circuit should help to find swift solutions to his problems over the next two days.

“It’s nice to be back in Australia at my home circuit,” said Bayliss, who was 13th fastest with a time of 1’31.8. “I’ve got a lot of references here and I know my way around really well, so when I had the same feeling here as in Sepang I was sure that it is something we have to work on in the set-up of the bike.

“More than anything it means that if we can get things right here, we’ll be okay at all of the other tracks. We have to work hard and we started to do that today without stopping. I did almost a hundred laps and we’ve already come up with a few modifications to try tomorrow.”

Bayliss’ marathon stint of 97 laps did much to impress his new team and Chief Engineer Santiago Mulero praised his work ethic, saying it had given the whole team a boost.

“Troy was the first rider out today, when the temperature of the track was still quite low,” said Mulero. “This is his circuit and he is determined to improve, which has given the whole team a lot of motivation.

“We’re working a lot on the geometry of the bike, on the suspension and the electronics. We know we’ve still got a long way to go but we’re working with maximum effort and concentration.”

Bayliss Camel Honda team-mate Alex Barros concentrated mainly on tyre tests today and, after his improving his time from last year’s Grand Prix, says he is confident of going even faster once the team get his Honda properly dialled in to the demands of the circuit.

“Today I was already able to do a 1’30.6, one tenth quicker than my best time from the GP here last year, but I am still not completely satisfied because my pace isn’t that good. I need a bit more grip on the front and we also need to work on rear traction.

“We tried some different tyres but we’ve still got some more to try tomorrow on the front and the rear. I’m sure we’ll also work to improve the set-up of the bike tomorrow, working on the suspension and electronics. There’s definitely room for improvement as far as the set-up is concerned.”

Barros’ Chief Engineer Ramon Forcada added: “Today we didn’t work too much on the set-up because we’re concentrating particularly on tyres. We started out with the same base set-up as Sepang and in order to be able to properly assess the difference between the tyres we decided not to play around too much with the settings.

“Tomorrow we’ll work more on the forks and the engine, and then the electronics. We saw from the telemetry data that in a couple of corners Alex isn’t as comfortable as last season so we know where we have to make the changes.”

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