The Honda TT Legends team is looking forward to the 2013 season after completing testing in France last week.
John McGuinness, Michael Dunlop and Simon Andrews all attended the test at Magny Cours, while Michael Rutter was forced to miss the session as he continues his recovery from a broken leg.
McGuinness, Dunlop and Rutter will campaign the team’s superbikes at the 2013 Isle of Man TT fuelled by Monster Energy as well as joining Andrews for this year’s Endurance World Championship.
The recent two-day test was final preparation before the first round of the championship, the Bol d’Or 24-hour in April.
The test enabled the team to continue the crucial development work that began at Albacete earlier in March, and also provided McGuinness, Andrews and Dunlop with another chance to get to grips with the 2013-spec CBR1000RR race machine.
Cold and damp weather, red flags and oil on the track hindered progress on the first day, but day two saw a slight improvement with all three riders completing a decent amount of laps and the crew working hard to get the bike ready to race.
Team manager Glen Richards said:
“Obviously the weather has held us back a bit, but we’ve made some good progress all the same. The crew have done a lot of work on the chassis and electronics, and although there were no official times, by our own timing the riders are all within half a second of each other which is a good place to be at this stage.”
“We’ve got a few things to try when we come back here for the race and overall we’re happy.”
McGuinness added:
“We’re frustrated with the weather, but it’s not been too bad.”
“The boys worked really hard to get through the programme of work and we’re heading in the right direction. We’re all at similar speeds and I think we’re ready for action.”
Dunlop, who was recently added to the EWC line-up alongside his road racing duties for Honda TT Legends, said:
“The weather’s been pretty terrible again so it’s been a bit tough, but we’ve made the most of the time we’ve had on track and made progress with the set-up of the bike. The team element of endurance is new to me but we’re all on a similar pace so that’s a good thing for when we’re back here for the race in a few weeks’ time.”
Andrews praised the team, saying:
“The guys have really grafted and we’ve done a lot of set up work over lots of laps. We’re working on getting faster out laps and just tightening things up ready for the race in April.”