Michael van der Mark will start tomorrow’s two 11th-round World #Superbike championship races from the front of the second row of the grid after setting the fourth fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole sessions at Jerez in southern Spain.
With temperatures in the low 30s, van der Mark impressively topped Superpole 1 and then, in Superpole 2, fired his Pata Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP around the 4.423km Jerez circuit in a time of 1m40.956s, just 0.6s off the record pole position time of Tom Sykes.
Van der Mark, 22, had found a step forward in the settings on his CBR in the earlier FP4 session, in which the Dutch rider also finished fourth after improving his overall pace for tomorrow’s two 20-lap races.
Despite making progress during Friday and Saturday morning sessions, Pata Honda’s Sylvain Guintoli went the wrong way with a geometry setting on his CBR in FP4 and was unable to match his team-mate’s performance in Superpole.
The French rider, 33, who will start his 150th World Superbike encounter in race two at Jerez tomorrow, qualified in tenth place and will line up on the fourth row of the grid tomorrow.
Michael van der Mark - P4
I’m really happy because in the last couple of races we’ve had really difficult Superpoles and today I finally found the grip on the qualifying tyre, which gave me a completely different sensation. It’s probably the first time this season that it’s worked well in qualifying. I knew that as soon as I could find some grip I could go really fast and we showed that today. I worked with Jonathan [Rea] at the beginning of Superpole 2 which really helped me a lot to get up to speed and I think we helped each other a bit. Normally we struggle a little when the temperatures go up but we’ve found a set-up now which works well when the track is warmer. The CBR feels really good, everything is working well and the race pace is quite OK. We really needed a good qualifying though because we’ve had g ood race pace before but ended up starting from bad positions. The start in tomorrow’s races will be very important but it was also important to be near the front of the grid; so I have a good feeling for the races.
Sylvain Guintoli - P10
So, qualifying didn’t really go to plan and I just didn’t have a good feeling going into Superpole. I made a couple of mistakes on the race tyre which didn’t help and then I had some traction control issues on my qualifier and the lap was not clean. I couldn’t get the exits that I wanted so that was it. FP3 was quite good for us and we found some good rhythm in that session, so it’s disappointing to start from so far back on the grid.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
Sylvain’s progress in FP3 this morning was not too bad, but in FP4 we tried a different geometry setting and we got no improvements. I think that lost us a bit of rhythm in the session and that carried on into Superpole 2. He wasn’t happy with how the bike behaved on throttle and couldn’t get in a groove. We’ll try for a smooth warm-up tomorrow and we know he has a good start. Mikey had a really good day. In that last free practice, when temperatures were up, he improved quite a bit and was one of the fastest guys on used tyres. In Superpole 1 he had good pace on the race tyre and went even faster on the qualifier. That got him ready for Superpole 2 and he got behind Johnny [Rea] and, on a race tyre, he was able to match his previous qualifier lap. So he was really up for that last qualifying lap completely on his own which put him fourth on the grid. He’s upbeat and everyone’s really motivated for two good races tomorrow.
Weather
Sunny
Air
31°C
Track
45°C
Humidity
44%
Qualifying Results
1 Tom Sykes 1m40.292s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Jonathan Rea 1m40.500s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
3 Niccolo Canepa 1m40.508s ITA DUCATI Althea Racing
4 Michael van der Mark 1m40.956s NED HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team
5 Jordi Torres 1m40.974s ESP APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team - Red Devils
6 Chaz Davies 1m41.155s GBR DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team
7 Michele Pirro 1m41.185s ITA DUCATI Aruba.it Racing-Ducati Superbike Team
8 Matteo Baiocco 1m41.415s ITA DUCATI Althea Racing
9 Alex Lowes 1m41.427s GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
10 Sylvain Guintoli 1m41.467s FRA HONDA Pata Honda World Superbike Team
