Round 10 – Germany
Lausitzring, Germany
The Honda WorldSBK Team has completed the first day of action for the German Round of the FIM Superbike World Championship, with both riders able to qualify directly to tomorrow’s Superpole 2 at the Lausitzring. Nicky Hayden was fifth in the combined times of the first two free practice sessions, while his team mate Michael van der Mark rounded out the top 10.
The two Honda standard bearers made good use of the two-day test – performed last month at the same track – as they were able to turn their attention more on race pace and tyre evaluation. Great weather conditions allowed both riders to put in a considerable amount of laps and, as the second session went underway, the battle for the fastest lap heated up. An ultra-close FP2 ended up with the top 10 covered by 0.478s.
The tenth-round Superpole 2 will begin tomorrow at 10:55, with race one scheduled at 13:00 local time (GMT+2).
Nicky Hayden 69 5th/1’37.713
It’s nice to be back on the bike and with the team! The day has been fairly productive; we haven’t had to make too many changes, just running with what we got. We tried a couple of different tyres to understand which one is better for the race. So far so good, although I wasn’t as consistent as I would have liked to be: I made a couple of mistakes under braking. At this track, braking is really crucial because that’s where you make your lap time. The track is quite bumpy so it’s easy to make a mistake, but at least the bumps are always in the same place, not like dirt track – where they move from lap to lap and from heat to main. I need to smooth out a bit, get my braking under control and go for it tomorrow.
Michael van der Mark 60 10th/1’37.927
We started really well this morning: our speed was good from the first moment we went out on track. For this afternoon, we decided to play a little bit with the setup but in the end we couldn’t find a big improvement. Our pace on the distance is really good, but we need to find some more speed on the single lap and – most of all – some more grip for tomorrow. Luckily enough we made it through for Superpole 2 and that’s probably the best thing that could have happened today. We’re not too far from the top and I’m sure that, with some tweaks to our Fireblade, we will be able to go a bit quicker tomorrow.
Pieter Breddels, Technical Manager
What we did today was basically to start with the base setup we found last month here and build from there with some fine tuning. No major changes then, just some tweaks especially with regards to suspensions. It took a little bit more time than usual for Nicky to get up to speed but with 20 minutes to go during FP2 he was able to take the lead. He was then passed towards the end of the session by some riders but overall his performance has been very positive. Michael was really quick straight out of the box in both sessions. His race pace is really good but unfortunately he wasn’t able to put everything together on the single lap and, in the end, he had a small problem with the bike. Still, he is in Superpole 2 and that’s really good news. His tenth position doesn’t tell much of his potential, which is much higher.
