Shane ‘Shakey’ Byrne will be back on the Be Wiser Ducati machine this week as the team goes testing in Spain.

The four time MCE Insurance British Superbike champion will be at the circuit in Cartagena as he puts the 2016 machine through his paces, ahead of targeting a fifth title.

Shakey finished runner-up in the 2015 season and returns for his latest campaign revitalised with his team returning to Ducati machinery and having already completed test sessions in Portugal and Spain earlier in the year.

The team are focused on making some further improvements to the new model before returning to the UK for the official test sessions at Silverstone and Donington Park before the opening round of the season. The opening two races of the 2016 MCE BSB kick off in April at Silverstone when Shakey will be targeting an unprecedented fifth title.

Speaking ahead of testing this week, Shakey said: “The first tests we have had already have been really positive, but I also think that we still have an awful lot to do. I have said a few times, you can buy a Ducati and the package now is so good that it feels like a race bike, however to make it into a BSB spec bike it needs to run the Motec ECU and various other things so we have been working from the ground up to get it right. We could have thrown some settings in that would have given us faster lap times but that wouldn’t have helped us in the long run. The team have done a really good job so far but we know there is still so much more to come.

“The changes work in different ways, so you have a constant development circle where you make improvements to the electronics, you then make more changes to the chassis etc and it goes through a whole loop. It has been great that my new crew chief Giovanni has also been to the workshop and been working with Phil [Borley] and the boys and have some new maps to put in and generally chipping away with the feedback we had from the previous two tests.

“One of the main areas was the throttle feel, so they had a focus on that and I think that it should feel more relevant for me now compared to Portugal and the last Spanish test. We then have some new components to test too so we have a pretty busy schedule, because once we leave these two Spanish tests it is back home for the official tests and then we need to be ready to go straight out of the blocks at Silverstone.”