Haga and Pitt test at Monza

27/4/2005

Yamaha Motor Italia riders Noriyuki Haga and Andrew Pitt today completed two
days of testing at the high-speed Monza circuit in preparation for the upcoming
round of the Superbike World Championship at the historic Italian venue.

In a busy test the team concentrated almost exclusively on chassis development
of their YZF-R1s, evaluating a new specification swingarm, several rear linkages
and trying out many new suspension parts over the two days. The Yamaha riders,
at the test with their rivals from Ducati and Suzuki, also tested a number of
development tyres from championship supplier Pirelli.

With the test focusing on chassis development, the team also used the outing as
a chance to carry out durability tests on the R1 engines. Running the engines
from last weekend's Valencia races, the motors in both machines ended the test
having clocked up over 2000 kilometres of running without failure.

"It has been a very good test," commented team coordinator Massimo Meregalli.
"We have been able to test many things and both Andrew and Noriyuki are very
tired due to all the work they put in. Both riders are happy with the set-up and
that will help us for the race here. Andrew has found a good combination with
the front brake (and suspension) that he will use here in the race and Noriyuki
tried out a new Yamaha kit swingarm which he tells us improves rear tyre life.
This is something else we will look to use in the race. We were also pleased
with the results of the engine endurance tests. Monza is a hard track on engines
but still had good performance and suffered no failures despite the high
kilometres."

Round four of the Superbike World Championship takes place at Monza on the
weekend of 6-8 May.