RACING APRILIA:

A Spring-like day opened the final round of the 2009 SBK at Portimao. All eyes were on Haga and Spies who were still battling it out for the title, but it was Rea on theTen Kate Honda who achieved the best time of 1:43:786, with a advantage of 80 thousandths over Smrz and 84 thousandths over Spies on his Yamaha.

It was eighth place for Max Biaggi with a time of 1:44:210 just 0:424 behind Rea. A problem with his RSV4 a few minutes after the end of the qualifying round complicated the Roman driver’s quest for the best race settings.

Leon Camier finished in nineteenth place with a time of 1:45:333, replacing Shinya Nakana who is still recovering from his neck injury, here in Portugal once again after Magny Cours. The young English driver experienced an apprentice’s day trying to learn all of the secrets of the track in Lusitana and to improve his feeling with the RSV4.

“Unfortunately, just fifteen minutes before the end of the warm-ups, the bike that I had been using all day had a little problem,” said Biaggi. “So during the last few minutes I had to use the second motorcycle with which I hadn’t even done one lap and it wasn’t ready. With respect to the last two races, we suffered from excessive vibrations going into the curve and this created quite a few problems for me. Now we’re working a lot to try to resolve these difficulties. I’ll have to drive it to try to find the best compromise to be the fastest possible starting tomorrow.”

“We made very few changes today with respect to the last round,” said Camier. “This was to improve my feeling with the RSV4 and to learn the track well, which is quite technical in some parts. We are still a long ways off compared to the others, but tomorrow we have to make some big changes, especially with regard to the curves, where I tend to slip a lot.”