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The Buildbase Suzuki team heads to Oulton Park this bank holiday weekend for the second round of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship, looking to improve on its performances from round one after a productive test at the Cheshire circuit last week, despite the weather.
Richard Cooper topped the two Superstock 1000 sessions he took part in during the test, and will be looking to take that speed into the weekend and add to his wins from Silverstone.
Meanwhile, his GSX-R1000R superbike-mounted teammates – Luke Stapleford and Bradley Ray – continued to work on improving their setups to extract the best from their packages. Despite the weather curtailing track action, they left with a clearer picture and a plan to work through this weekend.
Richard Cooper, “We’re in a good place. We had a good start at Silverstone with the wins, and during last week’s test we hit the ground running and ended up fastest in both of the morning sessions. Obviously there are no points for testing but it gives you confidence, we know the bike is working well, so hopefully we can have a good weekend and come away having extended our championship lead.”
Luke Stapleford, “I’d not ridden at Oulton Park for a few years, and it was something of an eye-opener on a superbike when we tested last week. We didn’t get as much work done as we’d have liked with the limited number of laps, and we’ve still got work to do and areas to improve to get completely comfortable. But I’m excited for the weekend. I didn’t expect to have quite as strong an opening round as we did at Silverstone, but the GSX-R is working well. We’ll keep working, keep our heads down, and I’m hoping we can build on those performances again this weekend.”
Bradley Ray, “We’ve not exactly had the start to the year that we wanted, but it’s not through a lack of hard work. We know the bike’s good enough to win races, we’ve done it, but BSB is so close you’ve got to have your setup bang on and we’re just missing a little bit to get us into that sweet spot. We could have done with a few more laps at last week’s test, but that said we came away with some valuable data, and looking back to Silverstone we managed to improve over the weekend and from race one to race two. And that’s the aim again this weekend, and hopefully we can come away with some strong results.”
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