Pata Honda riders Michael van der Mark and Sylvain Guintoli declared themselves happy with progress made during day one of the sixth-round meeting of the 2015 World Superbike championship at Donington Park in the UK today.
With three free practices sessions held today, both riders had a chance to evaluate chassis changes made to their Pata Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machines.
Dutch ace, van der Mark, 22, set the eighth-fastest combined time today, just 0.5s behind the provisional pole position time set by local British rider Tom Sykes. Guintoli is a further 0.3s behind in twelfth position but the 32-year-old French rider is confident of improvement tomorrow.
Following the morning’s final free practice session, Guintoli will go in Superpole 1 and aim to join van der Mark in Superpole 2 to determine final grid positions for Sunday’s two 23-lap races at the 4.023km Donington Park circuit.
Michael van der Mark - P8 1m28.748s
I’m really happy with the last session this afternoon. To be honest, in the first two sessions today we were really struggling but we were able to improve each time we went out. For the final session today we made a big change to the CBR and I got a good feeling again. I was able to do some consistent lap times with the old tyre and then, at the end, we put in a new tyre to go directly to Superpole 2. Even though there are still many things we can improve, I am really happy with our first day’s work here.
Sylvain Guintoli - P12, 1m29.025s
The feeling with the bike is really quite different with the changes that the team has made but we’re staying with it and we’re working hard on setting up the bike around these changes. I was not feeling good in Imola but here the feeling is much better and there are some particular points on the track where we are losing time. I feel like we can improve in those areas and we’re working on that. The CBR is behaving quite differently and it actually feels better than the lap time suggests. Tomorrow we’ll continue our work to make the bike a consistent front runner so hopefully we can improve that pace and keep moving forward.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
We were quite far behind this morning and had to change the bike quite a bit. But in the final session Michael especially got into a good rhythm and managed to do a few 1m28s laps, including a 28.7s which put him in eighth place. He’s happy with the steps we’ve made and is just 0.5s to the first guy so it’s really close here. It was much the same with Sylvain this morning but we made positive steps and he felt that we moved in a good direction each time. In the end he couldn’t quite get into the 28s but he’s feeling positive. Stopping the bike is still giving him some issues but on throttle and under acceleration he’s quite happy. Most importantly he feels better connected with the bike so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Weather
Overcast
Air
19°C
Track
30°C
Humidity
64%
Free Practice Results
1 Tom Sykes 1m28.172s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Davide Guigliano 1m28.283s ITA DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team
3 Jonathan Rea 1m28.483s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
4 Leon Haslam 1m28.516s GBR APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team - Red Devils
5 Chaz Davies 1m28.542s GBR DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team
6 Alex Lowes 1m28.572s GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
7 Ayrton Badovini 1m28.582s ITA BMW JR Racing Team
8 Michael van der Mark 1m28.748s NED HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team
9 Leon Camier 1m28.756s GBR MV MV Agusta Reparto Corse
10 Matteo Baiocco 1m28.787s ITA DUCATI Althea Racing
12 Sylvain Guintoli 1m29.025s FRA HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team