MV Agusta’s Leon Camier says he will have to gamble on a race tyre for tomorrow’s WorldSBK season opener at Phillip Island after an engine failure left him with only six laps on the board from two free practices today.
The former BSB champion managed a 1'31.405 in free practice one before the motor let go - due to a supplied part, Camier believes - and it was the same in session two. The lack of laps means Camier hasn’t been able to try a majority of the tyres provided by Pirelli so will have to go with his gut.
“We need more laps to work on a race tyre, there are others we haven’t tried yet so we don’t know if they could be a race tyre or not, we have no information at all. Race is 100 per cent going to be a gamble, we have to use the information from Pirelli and make the best of a bad situation,” said Camier,speaking at the track.
“We have got a good package for this weekend. For sure we aren’t going to be challenging for the win but if we can be in the next group, that is the most we could have asked for.
“It’s a little bit frustrating as a similar thing happened in the second session. We tried to put the engine back together but it leaked again, I had a couple of close calls and was lucky not to have gone down or anything major go wrong. Fingers crossed they can get the bike ready for tomorrow and there are no big problems.
“It feels good, to be honest, even in testing we only changed one thing with the shock from Portimao and we haven’t touched it since then. We have done a lot of work with the electronics to move forward but the base of the bike is really good. Even the lap I did this morning was not perfect by a long, long way but the time was pretty good."
