Sylvain Guintoli will start tomorrow’s eighth-round World Superbike championship races from the third row of the grid after setting the ninth-fastest time on his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP in this afternoon’s Superpole at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.

The French Pata Honda rider lapped the 4.226km Misano circuit in a time of 1m35.061s, just 0.6s from a potential front row start alongside pole position man Tom Sykes. The 32-year-old is confident of his race pace on old tyres, however, and is targeting strong results in Sunday’s two 21-lap races.

With track temperatures at the Misano World Circuit approaching 50°C, Guintoli’s Pata Honda team-mate Michael van der Mark, 22, was unable to find in Superpole 1 the pace that he showed in the previous free practice session.

The Dutch rider’s best time of 1m35.642s on Pirelli’s qualifying tyre was not as fast as the time he set on race rubber in Free Practice 4 and he was unable to progress to Superpole 2; but van der Mark and his crew are confident that, with two good starts, he can be in the mix tomorrow.

Sylvain Guintoli - P9, 1m35.061s

We did some good work in FP4 on used tyres and the rhythm felt quite good. I struggled with pure performance on the qualifying tyre and couldn’t get the best out of it, but we’ve done our homework and it feels like we’re ready for tomorrow. They’ll be two tough races – they’re always hard here on tyres and riders – but I’m looking forward to tomorrow because in FP4 we had a really good rhythm on two tyres that were both older than race distance. Hopefully we can turn that into two good results tomorrow.



Michael van der Mark - P15, 1m35.642s

This morning we started with quite a different setting on the bike but, in the end, the lap times were quite similar and we didn’t find much of an improvement. The field is so close and I ended up in Superpole 1 but in FP4 we found a good step with the bike and also my riding was better. So I went into Superpole with a bit of confidence but nothing seemed to be working. I tried with the race tyre and then the qualifier but the time didn’t come so we’re a little uncertain of our potential for tomorrow. As always though, I’ll try my best to get a good start and make up some places, and see we’ll where I am after 21 laps.

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
Michael struggled in the morning to break through the 36.2 pace so that was a hard session but in FP4 it was a lot better. He got into a better groove and, with the changes to the bike, that resulted in fifth place with a 35.4 which was a big step. In Superpole he was unable to repeat that and it didn’t work out on the qualifier either. Free practice showed that he can do good times though and I expect him to march towards the front. Sylvain did some good lap times on 22-lap tyres and a good lap on the race tyre in Superpole. But on the qualifier he could only find another three tenths and, to be honest, the tyre didn’t feel quite right. He’s a good starter though and his race pace is quite good so I think he can have a fight tomorrow.