Chris Burns in Barcelona

<<Back to NEWS

"I’m really starting to enjoy it," said Chris Burns at the end of four days of testing in Barcelona.

Despite the pressure of sharing the track with every star in the sport as the most competitive season in history prepared to start the Twenty One year old Englishman remained completely unfazed by the situation.

After just a couple of initial shake down runs in Britain the WCM started serious testing in Spain with the all new Harris WCM machine accepting that all but Team Roberts were well ahead in the development cycle. Team Roberts’ technically ambitious V5 engine project will not be ready for the start of the racing year.

The WCM engine is also at an early stage of development and the first two days of testing were done with the very first ‘wet clutch’ version of the engine. On hand to help out for those first two days was long time WCM friend Niall Mackenzie who had recommended Burns to Peter Clifford back in October 2002.

Mackenzie had made the trip to Spain as part of his work with the British Crescent Suzuki Superbike team for whom he does track testing. With their pre season testing going extremely well Crescent kindly allowed Mackenzie time to try the Harris WCM machine. "Probably the best racing four stroke I’ve ever ridden," was Niall’s kind reaction.

The Scott was very helpful in helping quickly progressing the sorting out of the AP Lockheed carbon brakes and the Ohlins suspension. Chris was finding the same brake and suspension teething problems on his side of the garage and comparing notes quickly produced the necessary progress.

Niall and Chris completed two good days of testing before Mackenzie returned to Britain on Friday. Saturday and Sunday was scheduled as the official launch of MotoGP for 2003 with two days of testing that included all the riders in the championship. WCM was the only team with a rider missing following Ralf Waldmann’s last minute decision that he would not be able to learn to ride a big four stroke.

For the two day weekend test one of the wet clutch engines was replaced with the dry clutch version that also had more horsepower. Just firing the engine up in the pit lane it was obvious that the power plant was sharper, more aggressive.

The weekend was very successful and Chris did a great job of steadily improving both his lap times and the set up of the bike. Sunday was cut a little short by oil pick up problems in the sump. Something that has since been reviewed and corrected in the engines being built for Suzuka.

While we know very well that we are up against it this season there was nothing distressing about the performance at Barcelona and it is going to be easier for us to improve than some of the teams who have already put in two or three months of intensive track development.