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It won't be Portimao but Austin the circuit that will see the return to racing of Augusto Fernandez in the last weekend of March. Miguel Oliveira's injury in Argentina has in fact messed up the plans of the Yamaha test rider, who instead of replacing Jonathan Rea in the World Superbike Round in Portugal, will fly to Texas to step onto the M1 left orphaned by the Portuguese.
A substitution that is certainly more up Fernandez's street, as he probably needed a bit more time than the two-day test held last weekend at the Argarve circuit to better adapt to the Northern Irishman's R1. That is a completely different bike from the MotoGP bikes to which the 27-year-old Spaniard is accustomed, and he only finished with the 13th fastest time on his debut riding the Japanese Superbike.
"We didn't have much luck with the weather, so there wasn't much time to spend on the track. Luckily, though, we had the last hour to try some things we had in mind to continue the learning process," Augusto declared at the end of testing in Portugal.
Although the first contact was positive, the Spaniard admitted that he still did not feel quite ready to tackle what was supposed to be his first Superbike race.
"I can say I'm happy with how it went. I was able to improve the lap time right at the end and I continued to get to know the bike, the team and everything. We are not 100 percent ready for the race, but we will continue to improve during the race weekend and hopefully we can be competitive in Saturday's race," Augusto had said when analyzing the situation. "The biggest challenge is that the tires are completely different from what I am used to. The bike, of course, is also different, as well as many other things. However, I'm getting used to it and I'm happy with the work done with the team. It wasn't an easy two days, but we've learned a lot."
