Round seven of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship has come to an end with the second race of the weekend at Donington Park, which saw the Honda WorldSBK duo of Nicky Hayden and Michael van der Mark finishing in sixth and eighth positions, respectively.
Nicky did not enjoy the best of starts from seventh place on the grid but was able to make up places using the outside line at turn one. By the end of the opening lap, the American rider was running in fifth place and setting his sights on fourth, which he took from Giugliano on lap four with a perfect pass at Coppice 1.
Hayden brilliantly defended his position from a competitive Lorenzo Savadori, who was right in his slipstream for almost the entire first half of the encounter. When he eventually dropped back to fifth behind the Aprilia rider, he started to experience a loss of grip, which made it difficult for him to keep a consistent pace around the 4.023 Km English track. He eventually had to give away one more position at the end of the penultimate lap of 23 and had nothing to fight back with before the chequered flag was deployed.
Michael van der Mark’s race was once again affected by his twelfth-place grid position; the Dutchman found himself battling for eighth place with Joshua Brookes and Cameron Beaubier, eventually getting the better of both opponents. In the final stages of the encounter, van der Mark’s pace was not too far from the front-runners, although he was not able to close on Giugliano for seventh.
World Superbike will now enjoy a three-week break before round eight, which will take place at the Misano World Circuit in Italy on June 17-19. The team will also perform a single-day test this Wednesday at the same track, in preparation for the Italian event.
Nicky Hayden 69
6th
Of course, I cannot be happy with sixth place but I have no excuses; the team did a great job with the bike and we switched to a harder front tyre, which gave me better stability under braking in the downhill corners. I did my fastest lap of the weekend, including qualifying, today. My pace was much quicker than yesterday but I simply wasn’t fast enough, especially after halfway when I started experiencing a little technical problem that hurt our performance a bit. I also struggled in changing direction, especially when lifting the bike and I had a couple of big moments at the Esses. Too bad, because for a while I thought I could close the gap to Chaz Davies and fight for the podium. As I said thanks to the team because the bike was better today and now we just need to come up with something to improve it a bit more.
Michael van der Mark 60
8th
It has been another difficult race for me, in all ways similar to the one I had yesterday. I was able to make a couple of places at the start but I got stuck again in the battle for eighth with Josh Brookes and Cameron Beaubier. I was eventually able to pass them and stay ahead, but it definitely wasn’t easy. Our starting position surely didn’t help, but we wouldn’t have had the pace anyway to battle for the top 5. There’s still a lot of work to do and we will start with Misano. Hopefully next week’s test there will help us find the solution to the problems I have been experiencing lately.
Pieter Breddels
Technical Manager
Nicky had a great first half of the race and it was clear that he had a good feeling with the bike. Unfortunately he couldn’t keep the same pace until the end and we are working hard to find out what happened. Sixth is not a bad result but surely we were looking for more today. On the positive side of things, we were able to improve the bike a lot during the weekend and that’s great news for the upcoming races. We tried the new suspension linkage on Michael’s bike that we used on Nicky’s yesterday and that, along with some changes to the electronics, helped him finding a better feeling. Unfortunately, this didn’t translate to a better result; he also had a small problem on the last lap, which we are sorry for. Hopefully on Wednesday at a one-day test in Misano we will be able to come up with a good set-up for both bikes in order to be ready for next round.
