Remy Gardner ‘wanted more’ on day one in Portimao, ‘we’ll try to do better with race pace’

The WorldSBK season-opener at Phillip Island is less than a month away and Remy Gardner is hoping to find ‘another step’ before then.

Gardner has been impressive during pre-season testing thus far, however, the Australian feels as though he needs more performance. 

• Nicolo Bulega warns rivals after day one at Portimao: ‘We are even better than Jerez’ 

• Michael Van Der Mark ‘a lot happier with new swingarm’ at Portimao WorldSBK test

That’s especially the case when it comes to race pace, with Gardner eager to match the likes of factory Yamaha duo Andrea Locatelli and Jonathan Rea.

Speaking about today’s final day of action at Portimao, Gardner said: “We’ll work on our base setup and not work on testing so many things; we’ll treat as more of a race weekend.

“The first race is coming and we’ll try to be a bit better with the pace and do a long run as well tomorrow.

“I think we got off to a good start and both factory guys have really good pace. Hopefully we can find something for day two and find another step.”

Gardner, who was busy testing various new parts aboard his GRT Yamaha, is again representing the team on his own due to Dominique Aegerter’s absence.

Aegerter missed the Jerez test due to illness and remains out of action, which means Gardner has taken on an even bigger workload.

“We had a lot of things to try,” added Gardner. “It was a decent day and we got up to speed quite fast, we need to find something else for tomorrow but a good start.

“I managed to do an OK lap time in the end and of course I wanted more but it’s only day one.

“We tried to look for some grips and were reconfirming parts from Jerez. We tried some more tyres to but nothing new.”