PATA YAMAHA TOP BARCELONA FRIDAY FREE PRACTICE WITH TEAM 1-2
The Pata Yamaha WorldSBK Official Team with Rizla enjoyed a competitive start to the first ever FIM Superbike World Championship event in Barcelona, with Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and Michael van der Mark going one-two in today’s free practice sessions, their best laps posted on Pirelli’s SCO standard race tyre during FP1. The lap times could not be challenged in the final session of the day due to wet track conditions.
As a new event for the riders, Razgatlıoğlu and Van der Mark completed a further 17 and 14 laps respectively during FP2 to find good wet setups and understand the conditions should showers continue tomorrow.
With possible scattered thunderstorms forecast until late morning, the final Free Practice at 09:30 (GMT+2) and Tissot Superpole at 11:00 could prove challenging for the WorldSBK field. The first points-paying FIM Superbike World Championship race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya will likely take place in dry conditions at 14:00.
Michael van der Mark: P2 – 1’42.309: “Really happy with the first day here in Barcelona, the conditions were different to the test but I felt very good with the bike immediately and the changes we made during FP1 were all positive. The bike’s also quite a lot different to what we had here at the test, so it was really interesting to see how the R1 was performing. I was really happy with how fast we were this morning, and also with the used tyre we had really good pace. In my fast lap I had a small moment, but even with this FP1 was great. FP2 was wet so I waited a little bit to see how track conditions were before I went out with the bike and to be honest I felt really comfortable. I was making progress every lap and in the end we tried a different bike set-up for these conditions but also the track was drying a lot. Happy with my bike, happy with FP1 and I think it was valuable to ride in FP2.”