Tyco BMW’s Christian Iddon wants to ‘tame’ his S1000RR and finds the bike a little bit too ‘aggressive’, but is pleased he was able to put down the quickest time during the second MCE British Superbike free practice session at Oulton Park.
The Stockport lad posted a 1’35.215 in dry conditions this afternoon, after a very damp opening session. His team did not realise just how wet it was out on track and opted for a drier rear setting on his BMW and struggled a bit in FP1.
But he soon made up for it and went for the softer tyre compounds on his fastest lap, but had to contend with a small electrical fault which slowed him down in some corners, so he believed that he could have gone even quicker.
“Conditions were fine. This morning was not the best and we thought it was going to be a bit drier than it was and so left a bit of a dry setting on the rear so struggled a bit this morning, so I had to ride the bike quite a lot on the front and I didn’t have the feeling that I wanted so I was quite happy with how we went this morning. So with a bit more of a wet set-up it would have been good,” said Iddon, speaking to bikesportnews.com at the track.
“It is nice to be P1 after the first day, it is good but there is still a lot to work on. Taming the bike down is what we will be working on, the bike is still a bit aggressive to ride and I don’t feel like I am riding the bike that well and I am fighting it too much, and quite a lot of it has to come from me.
“We had a bit of an electrical fault, we had something go on, which was slowing me down in a couple of corners, but I didn’t want to stop the runs and pull in so I carried on. So it is hard to decipher exactly how fast the run would have been but it would have been faster than what it was, I think about half a second off the run lap.
“Things are coming at me a bit too fast. I want my ‘spidy’ senses to kick in and my world to slow down a bit more - that’s what I am after. I am after a bike where things aren’t coming at me quite as quickly as they are at the moment, but on that bike with as much power that the BMW has got things come at me pretty quick.
"We ran soft’s on my fastest lap and I think we might be running them all weekend. In the past I have found a big difference between the one and the zero [tyre compounds] but on this bike it doesn’t really make anywhere near that much of a difference. I would happily enough use the one, it doesn’t really bother me if we have a problem with longevity then we will just chuck a one in.”
