GUINTOLI AND VAN DER MARK RETURN IN SPANISH HEAT
With air temperatures over 30ºC and track temperatures approaching 50ºC, Sylvain Guintoli and Michael van der Mark returned to World Superbike action at Jerez in Spain today.
After a seven-week summer break, the Pata Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP-mounted duo ended the day in 10th and 11th places respectively on combined times but close to the front positions.
With higher track temperatures reducing grip levels in the second free practice session at the 4.423km Jerez circuit this afternoon, many riders found it difficult to improve on their FP1 lap times.
However, those times were close, with Tom Sykes fastest overall and Michael van der Mark just 0.8s off the British rider’s provisional pole time.
Guintoli and van der Mark will both aim for top ten positions in tomorrow morning’s FP3 session at Jerez in order to progress directly to Superpole 2 which will determine final grid positions over the front four rows for Sunday’s two 20-lap races.
Sylvain Guintoli - P10Well, I can tell you that, after a month-and-a-half off, the CBR feels pretty quick! Especially here in Jerez, which really feels like a stop-and-go track compared to Sepang! It was a decent first day for us to get some feeling back and I think we actually did a pretty good job today. It was a shame that we had a small technical problem at the end of FP2 because we could have gone very close to the top five, which is OK. So it was a good day back at the office and it’s nice to be back on the bike and working with the team again because it certainly felt like a very long break.
Michael van der Mark - P11This morning was quite OK and I was getting the feeling back lap-by-lap. I didn’t get much more grip with a new tyre but the session was a good way to get back into a rhythm. This afternoon we changed many things on the bike and did quite a long run at the beginning. Even on old tyres we were able to still go quite fast so I was happy with that. We changed a couple of settings after that and, although they didn’t really develop things the way we wanted, I was able to keep improving the time. Overall the result is not too bad so I’m looking forward to getting back to it tomorrow.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinatorIt was not a bad day for both sides of the garage – we had no big problems or issues to deal with, which allowed us to work on improving the setting. Mikey still has some problems on corner entry so we need to make some adjustments to the engine brake. The conditions changed quite a bit from the morning to the afternoon and more track temperature here means less grip is available. With Sylvain 10th and Mikey 11th we are not that far from the front so it’s just basically work in progress.
1 Tom Sykes 1m41.957s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team 2 Jonathan Rea 1m41.981s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team 3 Alex Lowes 1m42.047s GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki 4 Chaz Davies 1m42.056s GBR DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team 5 Niccolo Canepa 1m42.125s ITA DUCATI Althea Racing 6 Jordi Torres 1m42.180s ESP APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team - Red Devils 7 Leon Haslam 1m42.254s GBR APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team - Red Devils 8 Matteo Baiocco 1m42.341s ITA DUCATI Althea Racing 9 Michele Pirro 1m42.408s ITA DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team 10 Sylvain Guintoli 1m42.643s FRA HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team 11 Michael van der Mark 1m42.784s NED HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team
