Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty continued to work on weight distribution and corner entry at the Lausitzring WorldSBK test and it paid off as he set the third quickest time of the two-day evaluation at a track he hadn’t seen before yesterday.

Laverty and the team have been using a new fuel tank since Donington Park but have only now got the weight balance in the place Laverty needs it most. The Irishman was under the existing lap record and a couple of tenths behind countryman Jonathan Rea, and was on course to better it when rain fell halfway through a faster lap.

“The problem with WorldSBK meetings at the moment is that FP1 and FP2 are pre-qualifying, in effect, so we don’t get the chance to do much evaulation work,” team boss Mick Shanley told bikesportnews.com from a German/Italian restaurant this evening.

“We have had the fuel tank for a while and we have just been continuing the weight distribution work with it. It started to pay off at Laguna Seca and we have carried on that work at over the last two days.

“Eugene set a couple of 1’36s laps on the soft tyre and looked like he was about to put in one faster but the rain came down halfway through it, so he has to scrap it. He, and Lorenzo too, also had decent pace on the harder option tyre as well, so we are pleased with the big steps we have made.”