Lloyds British Moto Rapido Ducati (and breathe) boss Steve Moore believes his team are in their best ever shape going into this year’s MCE British Superbike season after two successful Spanish tests with youngster and Nando’s worrier Danny Buchan.

The squad did four days at Cartagena where Buchan was right at the time-sheet sharp-end before moving on to Guadix where the first day was full of snow. However, the sun appeared on day two and Buchan concentrated on a new brake setup and his pace on worn tyres.

“We are in really good shape, the best we have ever been without a doubt. We’ve done more testing than ever before. We had a lot of work to do with Danny as he doesn’t have that much Superbike experience but he has taken to it really well,” said Moore, speaking to bikesportnews.com from a ‘services’.

“We left Cartagena with a good setup and we went to Guadix to qualify that setup. It is easy to set the Panigale up for one specific track so we wanted to get the base setting for Danny as good as we could as two tracks.

“On the second day, as it was a little cold on the first, Danny did a lot of laps and then also finished the day with a race simulation on the SC1. Almost all of his laps were within four-tenths of his fastest so we were are really happy. It was also a good test of his fitness as you’re up at around 4000ft above sea-level.”

“We also had two engineers from a new braking company called TK come over from Italy. Danny ran their discs and really got on with them. They work with some Ducati teams in the Italian series, so that sort of support is nice to have. They are going to make a selection for him.”