Pata Honda riders Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam were eighth and eleventh-fastest respectively after today’s two free practice sessions for Sunday’s seventh-round World Superbike championship races at Misano in Italy.

However, while not content with their overall positions on the Friday leaderboard, which was headed by local rider Davide Giugliano, both Pata Honda pilots are quietly satisfied with progress made in today’s two 45-minute sessions.

Rea is 0.6s off Giugliano’s time while Haslam is a further 0.3s away and both British riders are confident of further improvement in tomorrow’s two free practice sessions ahead of Superpole which will determine final grid positions for Sunday’s two 21-lap races at the 4.226km Misano circuit.

Jonathan Rea - P8

After a couple of difficult rounds at Donington and Sepang, we turned up here with some different engine brake strategies. To be honest, we got off to a slow start developing that and getting some base settings into it this morning. Our position of eighth might not reflect it, but we’re actually making quite good progress. I’m starting to feel like I have a bike that I can push again and I think we’ll make some good steps overnight. I’ve given some good feedback to the guys and I’m actually enjoying riding. It’s a shame we’re not closer to the sharp end, but we reduced the gap to the front quite a lot in the heat of that second session and we need to do the same in the morning. I’m satisfied with our work today but we need to keep pushing.

Leon Haslam - P11

This morning’s session wasn’t ideal and we got a bit interrupted with two red flags in this afternoon’s practice when we had a new tyre in the bike. But we found quite a major electronic issue that we couldn’t solve today but it should be quite easy to fix for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that, even though we’ve still got some way to go. We’re 0.9s off the quickest time and although it’s quite tight we definitely need to make those steps.

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator

We were quite a bit off with Jonathan’s settings this morning but we made some good steps this afternoon. We’re not there yet, but we’re improving and we have some good plans for tomorrow. We’ve seen some good progress during the day with Leon, too, and he’s not so far away from Jonathan. We’re speaking about some chassis changes for tomorrow and there are some electronics changes required, so we’ll see how those work tomorrow.

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