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Also at Portimao Axel Bassani and the Bimota KB998 confirmed themselves to be among the protagonists of these World Superbike winter tests. Although the wet track at the beginning of the day slowed everyone down a bit, the Veneto rider managed to rack up a total of 62 laps of the Portuguese track and end Tuesday as the first chaser of the leader Toprak Razgatlioglu. Accumulating a gap of just 29 thousandths of a second from the top.
"It's been a strange day because we started in wet conditions. We did some laps to try to see how the bike was in this circuit. We waited and it started to dry, but the track was quite difficult out from Turn 4 and Turn 10; there was a lot of water," "El Bocia" told the official championship website in an interview in which he commented on his day, "We tried something and the feeling with this bike on this track was good. It was the first time for us here and I'm feeling quite good. We improved a little bit with the rear. With Showa, we worked hard. I think we are going in a correct way and we need to continue with this."
Encouraging progress, even in light of the benchmark times set.
"We ran all day with the hard compound like everyone. It's hard to understand which tyres the rest of the riders are using. We continued with the race tyre and in the end we put on only one soft tyre to check where we are with it. We did quite a good lap," explained Bassani. "I think BMW and Ducati with Toprak and Bulega have some margin, but we are there. We have to be happy; this is the most important thing."
With four riders bunched within less than a tenth, the one just around the corner seems to be shaping up to be a particularly hard-fought season.
"We are only at testing, but it is like a race weekend: we are all close to each other. Sometimes it's difficult for us, but I think it's very good for the fans and for everyone. The level of Superbike has really started to be very high in the last few years. Every season it gets harder, but I hope we will continue like this," commented Bassani.
There is no shortage of work to be done ahead of the first race of the year, but Axel can start looking toward Phillip Island with a certain amount of confidence.
"How do I feel knowing that it is the penultimate test? The same as usual, as in previous years. We haven't ridden much in these tests because of the bad weather, but that's the way it is for everyone," he noted, "Tomorrow we should continue today's work, although the weather doesn't look the best and rain is expected starting at 11 a.m. local time. That would be a problem for us, because if we only run one hour we would have spent a day of testing anyway. So, we will have to see how it will go, be shrewd and figure out what will be best. Then we will have two more days of testing in Australia, which will be very important, since we will then race there. We still have some time, not much, but we will try to use it to the best of our ability."
