Planning, testing and a new race duo

North motor sport with ZOE BURN

NORTH Yorkshire World Superbike team boss Shaun Muir has admitted his bikes could be further ahead of the curve than ever when action finally resumes after lockdown.

Thanks to a rigorous offtrack development programme, the Guisborough businessman feels he and the factory-backed BMW Motorrad squad should soon have what it takes to upset the front-runners in the championship – despite the series’ enforced hiatus.

Muir’s successful SMR (Shaun Muir Racing) outfit partnered the German manufacturer in an official capacity last year and he now has two of the paddock’s most experienced riders in his stable to help develop the S1000RR superbikes – former champ Tom Sykes and Eugene Laverty.

The two series stalwarts have a combined two decades worth of experience which their team principal revealed he has been leaning on both before and after lockdown.

“There’s two fronts really – preparing the chassis work for testing and racing,” he said. “We had tests in November and January…we took that data to the first round in Australia and there were some aspects of that that were incomplete.

“We have taken the opportunity to do a bit more planning in that respect. There’s been a lot of analysis work carried out which is providing some good results.”

Through the enforced break from action due to

Covid-19, Muir and the team have been scrutinising data gathered from early tests.

And this is a process he believes will continue to bear fruit thanks to his riders’ distinctive styles and needs ontrack.

“Eugene was very clear from the very first time he stepped on the bike about what we needed to work on in the electronics area for him to find something he’s comfortable with,” Muir explained.

“On the other hand, Tom was focusing on race strategy, on long-distance strategy – we were struggling to get full race distance out of the tyres.

“As a pairing, Tom and Eugene are working very well together. There’s a lot of sharing of data and information.”

As one of the least-experienced manufacturers in the paddock, Muir knows how challenging it could be to reach the top of the championship. But thanks to closeknit ties with the Bavarian factory, he is adamant he can be in the mix.

“We can see Kawasaki are out front with Jonathan [Rea] and Alex [Lowes] – it’s a proven package. . . and Ducati obviously, you expect to see that. Now Yamaha have made a step forward.

“Between the Motorrad development team and our team we feel we’ve made some giant steps forward and we just need to refine that now.”