Hannspree Ten Kate Honda rider Florian Marino rode to eighth place in today’s second round World Supersport race at Donington Park in the UK. The race was won by Italian Luca Scassa.

Marino’s team-mate Fabien Foret was withdrawn from the race before warm-up this morning following consultation between his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team and medical staff. The French rider’s right hand was too sore to ride after his crash and subsequent operation on Friday.

Marino enjoyed a better start to the race than in the opening round at Phillip Island in Australia four weeks ago, but almost crashed at Donington’s Melbourne hairpin on both of the opening two laps.

The 18-year-old from Cannes in the south of France settled into a battle for his second top consecutive ten finish in his debut World Supersport season.


Florian Marino – P8

I expected it to be a hard weekend and that’s what it has been. We found a good balance in qualifying and the bike felt OK, but we used a different tyre today and it wasn’t the same feeling in warm-up. I couldn’t gas as quickly as I wanted because the grip level was not so good. My start was not so bad but I nearly highsided out of turn 11 on the first two laps and very nearly crashed in the first one and banged my arms quite a bit. I tried to follow the guys in front but couldn’t push so hard without the risk of crashing so I thought I would bring the bike home as fast as I could to get some points. Assen is the home race for the team and one of my favourite tracks so I’ll go there to do a lot better.

Fabien Foret – DNS

You can guess how disappointed I was to miss out on the race here and to have another weekend with no points. But it is better to go to Assen with the possibility of fighting for 25 points, rather than pick up two or three points here with the risk of further damage to my hand. I wanted to race, of course, but I realise that this was probably the right decision.

Ronald ten Kate – team manager

Of course we feel sorry for Fabien that he was not able to race today but it was a mutual decision to secure future rounds instead of looking at this particular Sunday at Donington. He should be good again for Assen. We changed Florian’s set up a bit for the race but unfortunately that didn’t work out as planned so he had no chance to move forward. But, we have to realise that he’s a young rider in his learning year so another top eight finish was a good result. We’ll now head to our home round which is one of both riders’ favourite tracks, as well as the team’s.