Michael van der Mark has claimed sixth place in the combined times of today’s two free practice sessions at the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, the venue that is currently hosting the eleventh round of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship. Nicky Hayden’s progression for today ended with a thirteen position: the experienced American rider, therefore, will need to make his way through Superpole 1 tomorrow.

Van der Mark did not enjoy the best start to the day as he was forced to sit out the first free practice session due to a technical problem experienced on his very first out lap. Despite the setback, the 2014 World Supersport Champion did not let himself down and as soon as free practice two got underway, he took to the track and got up to speed. The real breakthrough came towards the end of the session when, after some changes made to the rear settings of his Fireblade, van der Mark bounced back to fifth position. He then lost one place before the chequered flag was deployed, but with no consequence as the Dutch rider had already successfully qualified to Superpole 2.

With no previous racing experience at this track, Nicky Hayden had to get a first taste of how the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP behaves around the French circuit. After finishing the opening session in tenth place, Hayden and the team had a tricky time in finding a good direction in terms of setup for the bike; the 35-year-old from Kentucky was able to improve his morning lap-time by 0.3s, but that was still not enough for him to earn a spot in the top-10.

Michael van der Mark - 60 - 6th/1'38.384

It was a good day overall, despite losing the whole FP1 with a technical problem that couldn’t be fixed in time. I was really disappointed, but instead of waiting I decided to take my scooter and have a look at the other riders from the other side of the fence, and I surely managed to learn something from that! This afternoon we decided to make a big change to the rear of the bike and that worked out perfectly. We made a big step forward and I was able to ride the bike the way I wanted. I was happy because we also found some consistency despite the lack of time. In the end we’re not too far behind and, of course, the most important thing is that we were able to qualify for Superpole 2.


Nicky Hayden - 69 - 13th/1'39.099

It hasn’t been a silky smooth Friday at all. We were not able to get up on pace like I would have have hoped: I think it could be a combination between adjusting back to my Superbike and being unable to properly getting up to speed at this track. Nonetheless, I’m still far from happy for being 1.2s off the pace in both sessions. More importantly, we really haven’t found the right direction in terms of setup. Basically the bike is moving a lot everywhere when banked over and there is a lack of grip; maybe it’s because I wasn’t able to give the team the right information, because I feel we have been skirting around the problem. We have to come up with some ideas because there’s very little time before race one.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

After the technical problem he had in the morning, as soon as free practice 2 started we were forced to make some changes to the bike as Michael felt it was moving around too much. We changed the rear spring and that worked out really well. In the end we tried something with the front but that didn’t lead to any real improvement. By then, though, he was already up to speed and setting some really competitive lap times. He’s not far from the top despite the lost session and we’re confident he can further improve tomorrow. It wasn’t an easy day for Nicky: surely he had to reacquaint himself with the bike after racing in MotoGP last weekend, but like Michael he was also complaining about the bike moving around a bit too much. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a good setup for him today and we have some work to do, but we can compare his data with the one from Michael and see if we can come up with new ideas.