Paul Bird Motorsport rider Michael Laverty gave a positive analysis of the winter test period at the end of the Qatar sessions on Sunday evening.

Laverty wrapped up his preparations for his second World Championship campaign in the penultimate position on the timesheet, 3.7s off P1, just ahead of his new teammate – rookie Broc Parkes.

“The last day did not go as well as Saturday for us, but we think we understand where the issues were,” Laverty stated afterwards. “We know what we need to address at round one when we come back here in two weeks time. We’ve got a good direction but we only used one tyre all night, so we didn’t get down to the lap times that we could have done. But overall I think we’ve got a pretty good setting.”

He is upbeat about the challenges ahead this season and is setting himself some clear targets. He added, “We’ve learned a lot during this winter period and hopefully we can step it up and see the fruition this season. The Avintia Racing boys are our target, they were a bit faster than us today but we were close to them on Saturday. I think we’ll be stronger this season and I’m looking forward to it.”



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