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"We have no gravel traps at Paul Ricard, just large run-off areas covered in abrasive tarmac," the circuit director proudly announced to the assembled journalists. "If you make a mistake then ride over the curbs and brake on the blue and red tarmac strips." Somewhere at the back of the room a voice asked the question on everyone's minds. "What if you're sliding?" "In that case don't slide onto the red strips, they are very abrasive, you'll stop very quickly!" said the director, suddenly looking very serious. Glad we got that cleared up then.
Circuit Paul Ricard has just gone under a massive overhaul thanks to Formula One mogul Bernie Ecclestone. The man with a wad of cash big enough to choke a blue whale has spent a fortune converting the historic circuit, up until 1999 the host of the Bol d'Or 24-hour race, into a purpose built F1 test track. Which explains the lack of gravel traps. It's far better for a multi million pound car to spin to a halt rather than sink up to its axels in gravel. But sandpaper run-off aside the shortened 2.5 mile circuit (no full length Mistral straight, boo!) has everything from 150mph to 20mph braking, walking pace corners, tight left-right chicanes, on and off-camber, fast 100mph plus knee-down and even a long, long right-hander that tightens on the exit to really put a bike through its paces. And the Benelli passed with flying colours.
I was genuinely surprised just how good the Tornado was. The chassis is easily on par, if not better, than the Japanese litre-bikes and feels less nervous. Now a lot of this feeling is probably attributable to the snooker table flat track surface and we will have to see how it deals with the bumps and ruts on UK roads but all the same it was very impressive. On the low speed corners the Tornado takes minimal effort to turn into a corner and goes from upright to knee-down extremely quickly. Usually this would mean that the high speed stability of the bike is compromised but on the Tornado there seem to be no ill effects and it was perfectly stable at around 150mph on the front straight as well as leant over through the 100mph plus right hand turn. According to Benelli the chassis owes all of its development to the World Superbike team.
While on television it may have looked like the Tornado was struggling and off the pace Benelli was actually using all the track testing time and race data to perfect the chassis of the road bike. Probably not the best use of finances but the WSB team did succeed in raising Benelli's profile on the world scene again and has helped produce a very good handling bike, which counts for a lot.
