Sylvain Guintoli scored two eighth place finishes in Monday’s sixth round World Superbike championship races at Donington Park in the UK, both of which were won by local rider Tom Sykes.
Pata Honda rider Guintoli used much of the weekend’s practice and races to evaluate a revised frame and swingarm combination on his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machine and the 32-year-old declared himself happy with the positive effect these new components had on his overall performance.
By contrast, his Pata Honda team-mate Michael van der Mark endured a torrid race day, crashing out of race one and then being forced to retire from the second 23-lap outing at the 4.023km Donington Park circuit with a technical issue.
The team will re-group for the seventh round WSBK meeting at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve near Portimao in Portugal in a little under two weeks seeking further positive progress with the CBR package.
Sylvain Guintoli
It’s was a weekend to assess quite a lot of new parts and there are some good points to take from it. In the second part of the lap we were doing some quite good times and we gained stability under braking. We managed to be quite fast there so that’s good, but there are still areas where we struggled. In race two we managed to keep a much better pace at the end of the race. It was not faster at the start but much faster and more constant at the end, so that’s an improvement. I also had a good battle with my ex-bike and unfortunately just lost that by a tiny bit! The front runners were quite a long way from us today, but we have to keep fighting and keep improving the package for the rest of the season. We’ll keep the new frame and swingarm for Portimao to develop it more there.
Michael van der Mark - DNF & DNF
There’s not really much to say because it’s been the most disappointing weekend for me on a superbike. I felt like we made some progress during each session except in Superpole yesterday when I could not get the qualifying tyre to work. That left me quite a long way back on the grid so I was pushing hard in race one to make up some places when I crashed. I’m not sure what the problem was in race two but there was a technical problem with the front of the bike that meant I could not continue. It’s a shame but we will learn from these issues as we always try to and move forward to Portugal.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
Michael has not had a good day with a crash in race one and then in race two he had a mechanical problem with the front of the bike which we tried to fix but he had to retire. Sylvain found some good chassis improvements this weekend and he finished eighth in race one. We made some changes to the geometry for race two because he was losing out a lot in the second sector and that worked out better as well. It meant he could maintain a much better pace overall until the last few laps when he had to let it go a little. But it’s been a positive weekend with good steps and he’s feeling more happy with the bike, so we’ll take that to the next race in Portugal.
