Thursday and Friday at the Almeria circuit there won’t be only Tom Sykes and Loris Baz with their Kawasaki’s, but also present will be the Crescent FIXI Suzuki team with Leon Camier in his season with the British based team and World Superbike rookie, Jules Cluzel who was the 2012 World Supersport runner-up.
The Suzuki’s last test was at Aragon in October with Camier finishing third overall and team decided to skip the November test at Jerez with the rest of the SBK teams, so the two days at Almeria will be a proper shakedown test for the riders and their Suzuk GSX-R’s after the winter break before they head to Jerez next Tuesday for another test and before they ship up everything and head to Australia for two further tests ahead of the season opener at Phillip Island on February 24th.
Leon Camier said, “I’m really looking forward to the test and seeing the progress the guys have made in the winter.
I know that they have refined the bike quite a bit and that is has more power than last year, so I’m really excited about riding it.
We will also have the new 17inch wheels to test, so it will be good to see how the bike behaves with them.
I’m sure, that with everything the crew has done back at the workshop, we will be a lot nearer where we want to be.
I’ve managed to do lots of riding during the break, including some Enduro and push-bike trials, and I’m off to do a bit of dirt-track before I go to Almeria, so that should sharpen me up nicely for the two tests.
” Jules Cluzel was confirmed by the team and the end of October, after John Hopkins announced that he was taking sabbatical from racing to try to solve his hip issues, so Almeria will be the French rider’s first contact with the Suzuki Superbike.
“I’ve had over two months of waiting to ride the FIXI Crescent Suzuki GSX-R and am now really excited that the time is here to get out on track.
I don’t really have an idea of what to expect from a 1000cc machine, how it will feel and handle and mostly how much quicker it will be, but I know I am really looking forward to whatever happens.
I have done lots of training through the winter to get fitter and stronger and I had an operation to cure my arm-pump issues and that has been a success, so I feel really good and ready to go.
I’ve ridden at Jerez before, but have never been to Almeria, so it’s a good place to start my experience on the bike, as I don’t know the track or the GSX-R, so I can take it steady to start with and get to learn both,” said Cluzel.
Team boss Paul Denning said, “The FIXI Crescent Suzuki team has been working relentlessly since the end of last season to produce a faster, sharper and more competitive GSX-R1000.
These two tests in Spain will give us the opportunity to understand what we have achieved, but at the same time we need to manage our expectations and treat them as shakedown tests – the laps in Spain will provide Jules with his first kilometres on a Superbike and allow Leon time to get back up to speed after a long winter break.
The atmosphere in the team is very positive and the attention to detail that the guys here – and our partners at Yoshimura and all our technical suppliers – have put into the bike has been extremely impressive.
Without turning a wheel, we know that the technical platform of the 2013 FIXI Crescent Suzuki is much stronger and it will be nice to start working with it later this week.
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