I flew out to Spain a few days early on the Saturday, so that I could get a few extra days of training in before the team started on track at Circuito de Velocidad de Cartagena. 

The facilities at the resort where the team were staying were top notch, with a full gym, spa, tennis & squash courts and much more.  It was also a chance to meet the new team, my mechanics, and the other riders.

Track time started at 10am on the Wednesday, and after an initial half lap it was evident there was a problem with the bike. Coming straight back into the pit box I spoke to my crew chief Justin, and he made a few changes to the electronics and sent me back out.  The problem was still there, so I came back in to plug the bike back into the laptop and try again.  This went on for the whole day so I didn’t really get to fall into any sort of rhythm with the bike and start getting a feel for it. As it turned out, the bike was suffering from a fuelling issue so it was loaded up into the van and taken to a local tuning shop so my team could run it on the dyno and remap the fuelling completely.

Day 2 on the Thursday was a wash out with rain, and what with this track being notoriously slippery in the wet due to all the car rubber we didn’t go out at all. So still no real laps on the new bike!

Friday came around and the track basked in sunshine so it was game on to start getting laps in.  The problem was fixed and I was able to go out behind my team mates to pick up the lines and braking markers which I was yet to discover due to no track time until now.  After a few sessions, and a couple of tweaks to the rear end to help control the power out of the corners I was able to lap 10-12 laps in a row all within 0.2 seconds of each other.  I had next planned to start working on the front to get better feedback from the forks but we ran out of time and the test drew to a close.

First impressions of the Tsingtao Racing factory MV Agusta F3 675 are great – once I have had more time on the bike and got it set up how I want it, for sure we will be in a great position going into round one of British Superbikes at Donington Park on the first weekend of April!

I can’t thank the team enough for all their hard work out in Spain, and also the guys back at the factory in Italy for building me such a weapon of a bike!  Hopefully we will be back out here testing in a few weeks and I can make more progress. Big thanks to my personal sponsor Steve Wyer at Capital Market Consulting for helping me get out here and I can’t wait to get back on the bike now!