New Suzuki off to a faster start
Honda aren’t the only team with a new bike for 2017 – there’s also the small matter of the mechanical variable valve timing-equipped Suzuki GSX-R1000. Unlike Honda’s BSB team which got their bikes in January, Bennetts Suzuki took delivery of their GSX-R in November and have been working on developing it into a race bike ever since alongside Suzuki’s official race-tuning partner Yoshimura. Yoshimura have been developing the GSX-R for some time, starting well before the bike was officially revealed at the EICMA show in Italy last year. This support from Japan places the Bennetts squad at a distinct advantage to Honda, who develop most of their parts in-house at their Louth workshop. Suzuki are without doubt ahead of Honda with development, and while team boss Steve Hicken says he’d love more time working on the bike, they’re in a pretty strong position ahead of round one after a number of pre-season tests. “Are we ready? I hope so!” he told MCN. “It’s been a busy few weeks no doubt about that but every year in racing if you offered me a few more weeks before round one I’d take it! “The bikes have shown a lot of potential in winter testing and I think we’re only just scratching the surface. It’s early days, but Sylvain Guintoli and Taylor Mackenzie as well as Brad Ray on the Buildbase bike were all happy with the stock package and as we’ve introduced bits from Yoshimura the feedback has become more and more positive.” Interestingly, Guintoli and Mackenzie spent a lot of their testing in stock trim and they’ve both said it already felt like a race bike before they added the Yoshimura parts.