WORK IN PROGRESS FOR VAN DER MARK
Pata Honda rider Michael van der Mark found things far from easy in today’s opening two Free Practice sessions for round five of the World Superbike championship at Imola in Italy. The Honda CBR1000RR rider ended the day in 13th place following the two 45-minute sessions at the historic 4.936km Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, 45km south-west of Bologna.
The result means that the Dutch Pata Honda World Superbike rider and his team has plenty of data analysis to go through this evening in order to allow the rider to improve his lap time. Only the fastest ten combined times following tomorrow morning’s third Free Practice session will qualify automatically for the afternoon’s Superpole 2 that will determine final grid positions on the front four rows for Sunday’s two 19-lap races.
Michael van der Mark (P13, 1m49.651s): “It’s been a difficult day today because the bike is not yet working exactly how I want. I really like the track here and it feels like I’m fast but I’m having some problems in the braking area. We tried a lot of things to fix this because it is the main issue that we have but none of them really worked well. We will have to study everything very carefully tonight and try to find a new direction for tomorrow.”