From a press release issued by Ducati Corse:

DUCATI FILA RIDERS LACONI AND TOSELAND COMPLETE PREPARATIONS FOR WORLD SUPERBIKE FINALE

Magny-Cours (France), 15 September 2004: Regis Laconi and James Toseland completed preparations for the last two rounds of the World Superbike championship with a two-day test session at Magny-Cours, France, the venue for the season’s finale on October 3.

Almost two days of good weather in the Nevers area enabled the two Ducati Fila riders to lap without any problems and find some good settings for the French circuit in view of the race.

Laconi, whose best time was 1:43.0 on race rubber, declared: “We worked a lot on chassis settings here and I was very happy with the feeling. We started with the same front-end problem as at Assen, but over the two days we sorted that out and I was able to run very quick and at a very constant pace. I’m optimistic for the race.”

Toseland, with a time of 1:43.2, was just a couple of tenths of a second off the pace of his French team-mate. “These two days were very positive, we were trying to get the bike to work good around this difficult circuit and we succeeded. We tested a number of different tyre compounds, both front and rear, and made some changes to the bike, but I found that I was also pretty happy with my Assen set-up with which I won last Sunday’s race.”

Four riders, Toseland, Vermeulen (Honda), Laconi and Haga (Renegade Ducati) are still in with a chance of the title as World Superbike heads to Imola next week and then Magny-Cours seven days later for its exciting finale.

POINTS (after 9 of 11 rounds); (Riders) 1. Toseland 255; 2. Vermeulen 252; 3. Laconi 245; 4. Haga 241; 5. Chili 213; 6. McCoy 163; etc.

(Manufacturers) 1. Ducati 430 (champions); 2. Honda 259; 3. Petronas 173 ; 4. Kawasaki 106 ; 5. Suzuki 84 ; 6. Yamaha 60.