From a press release issued by Benelli:

After a month-long break the Benelli Sport Superbike team is back in action with the Tornado Superbike this weekend at Oschersleben, near Magdeburg in Germany. The team is already making steady progress, despite never having been to the track before.

“For every race it’s the same situation for us at the moment,” commented rider Peter Goddard. “Each track is completely new to us and this leaves us at a disadvantage compared to most teams, who have been here before and have set up data to work from. This means we spend the first sessions finding a base setting to work from, and that means Saturday’s final qualifying comes around all too quickly. But that’s how it is and we knew it would be like this, so we have to try learn as much as we can so we can start from a better level next year.”

Team members haven’t been idle since the last race a month ago at Brands Hatch in England. “We’ve been working to get both our bikes up to the same level,” explained Team Manager Max Zani. “We won’t be doing anything that involves big changes to the bike before the end of the season, we’ve concentrated on reliability for now. But when the season ends we have many new parts and engineering solutions to try, but these things need time and that’s what we don’t have so much of at the moment. When we have more time we can test everything thoroughly and we hope to make some big gains in performance for next season. We already have lighter wheels and radial brakes to try, but we haven’t used them yet.”

Both bikes have run perfectly so far this weekend, so it looks like the hard work during the recess has paid off. But the pressure is on the team to perform; Goddard scored points in both of the last two meetings so the racing world is looking for a continuation of that form. “That puts a lot of pressure on us all,” said Goddard. “If we go away without scoring more points people will think we’re slipping!”

The weather at Oschersleben has been changeable, with the track being wet for free practice in the morning but dry for qualifying. “I’d prefer it to stay dry,” said Goddard. “The track feels very slick when it’s wet.”

The Benelli Tornado was 20th-fastest in timed qualifying with a time of 1:29.768. Goddard finished only 0.256-second outside of a provisional place in the Superpole.