The 2018 adventure of the Triple M Honda WorldSBK team, with their rookie WorldSBK rider PJ Jacobsen on board, took to the track with their new bike and Magneti Marelli electronics package in place at Portimao, on the first day of a two-day test.

“It is pretty good and we have a lot of stuff to work through, but we have been achieving a lot,” said Jacobsen midway through his first experience of his new bike and a team moving up from Superstock racing. “The team is going great and I am quite happy about how things are progressing.”

Setting a 1’47.160 with just under two hours of the day to go he is still very much getting used to all aspects of his new ride for 2018, so he has not been using many rider aids. “We are working on the electronics and we started with a kind of base setting. Everything is pretty much turned off. We are starting from scratch, which I think is the best way to do it. We will be putting in the anti-wheelie and traction control, eventually. We are not at that stage yet. It is just going to take some time.”

The asphalt roller-coaster of Portimao may not be the ideal venue to be introduced to your new 200bhp Superbike at, for many riders at least, but Jacobsen was excited by it rather than intimidated.

“We have to come back here so it does not really matter,” he said. “I feel like this track has so many different corners, and characteristics to them, that it is probably good to set-up your bike. It is a physical track and pretty crazy on the Superbike – but it is good.”

By Gordon Ritchie