BSB: Guintoli quietly confident ahead of Round 1

Sylvain Guintoli remains quietly confident ahead of the opening round of the 2017 MCE British Superbike Championship at Donington Park this weekend.

The 2014 World Superbike Champion heads back to BSB with the Bennetts Suzuki team this season and while the GSX-R1000 is a completely new bike for 2017, the Frenchman and the Mallory Park-based team have put in plenty of work over the winter to arrive at the first round competitive. 

Having also ridden the factory-spec Yoshimura Suzuka Eight Hour machine in Sepang, Guintoli is confident the GSX-R can be a strong challenger in BSB trim.

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“The team has done a lot of work over winter, and it was good to do so many laps on the base bike early on, as we know it has really strong qualities and we know what they are,” Guintoli said.

“I also rode at the factory test in Sepang, which gave me an idea of how the bike works as a race bike. But with BSB we have different rules and regulations we have to work to, so testing has been about getting the bike to work within those. We have had some good tests over winter and done a lot of work. The Donington test was in really bad weather but it was still important for us to test and see how the bike works in those conditions. We have some bits to still improve, but it doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s good to be going racing now. We are going to face some strong competition and teams with lots of data. But we have been improving every time we go out, we’ve set some good lap times, and now we need to do it when it counts.”

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