Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By David Swarts

Yoshimura Suzuki spent two days testing at California Speedway March 19-20 with much of the focus placed on testing tires on the new GSX-R1000 Superbike.

“Dunlop was a little concerned with the tire wear our bikes were causing at Daytona,” Aaron Yates said Tuesday during a telephone press conference organized by California Speedway. “You may know, I guess, my two teammates (Mat Mladin, Ben Spies) had a bit of tire trouble. My bike, I’m not sure if it was a difference in the set-up or riding style or what, my tires weren’t too bad, but compared to the other brands – the Hondas and the Kawasaki – we had a little less rubber left on the tire.

“So Dunlop was a little concerned, and they just wanted to go there (California Speedway) before the race and check the tires they were planning on bringing and make sure they were going to be sufficient for us. And basically that’s pretty much what we concentrated on.

“We had a couple of little things here and there that we tried and made the bike a little more comfortable for me, so that’s always good.”

Asked by a reporter how the Fontana racetrack was in relation to tire wear, Yates said, “Well, California Speedway is not too bad. There, we pretty much run our standard tires that we run on a standard racetrack anywhere.

“The only thing about California Speedway, there’s only one, two, like two-and-a-half right-hand turns. So most of them (are) to the left. So we use up the left side a pretty good bit. But there in testing we found a couple of tires that work pretty good for us.”

Yates added that Dunlop has a “whole new batch” of Supersport and Superbike tires for 2003.