FOURTH ROW START FOR VAN DER MARK AT DONINGTON
Dutch rider Michael van der Mark will start tomorrow’s two sixth-round World Superbike championship races from the fourth row of the grid after setting the twelfth fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole session at Donington Park in the UK. Despite showing positive rhythm and pace on race tyres Van der Mark was unable to maximize the additional grip provided by his Pirelli qualifying tyre in Superpole two. Tomorrow’s two 23-lap Donington Park races go at 12.00 and 15.00 local time (GMT+1).
Michael van der Mark (P12, 1m28.715s): “I’m quite disappointed with our qualifying position today because I was feeling quite confident that we could make some further progress after a good start yesterday. Everything felt OK in practice this morning and I went into Superpole 2 with quite a good rhythm on the race tyre. Unfortunately, once again, we couldn’t get the bike to work on the qualifying tyre and I was not able to improve my time. I’m feeling OK with the race tyre so we’ll check some things in warm-up tomorrow morning and then hope to get a couple of good starts in the races.”