While Superbike testing at Portimao was a wash out due to rain, the Aprilia Alitalia team and Yamaha Racing were at Phillip Island, but they to found a cloudy and very windy day that didn’t condition the test, but track temperatures weren’t higher than 19°C.
Reigning World Champion Max Biaggi who dominated the previous Aragon tests was the fastest out on the Australian track with a best lap of 1′32″4 of the 71 the Italian did.
Biaggi was using his updated version of the Aprilia RSV4, that included a new swingarm and the 2011 Ohlins and new Pirelli tiresAprilia team mate Leon Camier had technical difficulties on both his bikes with leaking engine gasket problems and abnormal rise in oil pressure that forced him to stay in his garage for most of the session, but the Briton was third in the unofficial test times and a second slower than Biaggi.
Eugene Laverty was the second fastest of the day and 5 tenths slower than the Italian, while Marco Melandri on his second outing with the R1 after an impressive debut at Valencia, had problems with the wind in three different sectors of the track and on the final turn was loosing almost half a second.
The former MotoGP rider tested both the 2010 and 2011 versions of theYZF-R1.
Testing will continue tomorrow, however forecasts predict rain all day.
Superbike – Test Phillip Island – Day 11.
Max Biaggi (Aprilia) 1′32″4 (71 laps)2.
Eugene Laverty (Yamaha) 1′32″9 (86 laps)3.
Leon Camier (Aprilia) 1′33″4 (88 laps)4.
Marco Melandri (Yamaha) 1′33″5 (78 laps)