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EXPECTATIONS HIGH AS PATA YAMAHA HEAD TO ARAGÓN DOUBLE-HEADER

  |   News Racing

The Pata Yamaha WorldSBK Official Team with Rizla is eager to again challenge for victory during the next two rounds of the FIM Superbike World Championship, starting this weekend at MotorLand Aragón, Spain, on 29-31 August. The back-to-back events of Aragón and Teruel, held at the same venue, follow a successful restart to Pata Yamaha’s championship campaign, which saw at least one Yamaha R1 on the WorldSBK podium in each race at Jerez and Portimão.

 

In a recent two-day test to prepare for the upcoming races, Pata Yamaha riders Michael van der Mark and Toprak Razgatlıoğlu completed a combined total of 254 laps with a special focus on rear grip in hot conditions similar to those anticipated this weekend. With clear aims to fight for the podium, both Van der Mark and Razgatlıoğlu will have their work cut out for them. At 5.077 km, Aragón is the longest circuit of the WorldSBK calendar in 2020 featuring a mixture of sweeping corners, tighter slow turns and a back straight more than a kilometre long.

 

Van der Mark has ridden to a top-five position aboard his R1 on no less than four occasions here, in 2017 and 2018.

 

Michael van der Mark: “I’m really happy to go racing again, it’s going to be an exciting one I think because we had a very good test with some other top teams at Aragón a couple of weeks ago. So, we are looking forward to starting racing again! It will be interesting and tight, but my goal for this weekend is to take my first podium finish in Aragón and hopefully we can have a good battle for victory as well. I think we made some proper progress during the test, so we are ready to race and I’m just excited to start.”