Nicky Hayden was the fastest rider at the end of today’s two free practice sessions for the eighth round of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship, which is currently underway at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy. His Honda WorldSBK teammate Michael van der Mark was ninth at the chequered flag this afternoon. This means that both riders are seeded directly into Superpole 2.

After finishing second in the morning’s first free practice session, Hayden managed to stay in the top 5. But as the session was drawing to a close and with a set of new tyres fitted on his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP, the 34-year-old from Owensboro, Kentucky, was able to put together a 1’35.263 time to come out on top of what was an ultra-close hour of afternoon track-action at Misano.

Michael van der Mark made an important step forward between FP1 and FP2 to improve his quickest lap-time by six tenths of a second, as the young Dutchman was gradually building speed onboard his Honda machine. His final time of 1’35.643 was only 0.380 seconds shy of the top and only 183 thousandths of a second away from fifth place.

World Superbike action will resume tomorrow morning for the 15-minute free practice 3 at 8.45, while Superpole 2 and race 1 will get underway at 10:55 and 13:00 local time (GMT+2), respectively.

Nicky Hayden 69 - 1st

It was nice to be fastest today! In the end, we put a new tyre on and I was able to drop my time quite a bit. The track was definitely dirtier than in testing and there was not as much rubber down, so it took a little bit of time for the grip to improve. I have to admit that I’m not particularly happy with my pace; this morning things went quite smoothly but this afternoon we had a few issues with the electronics: they were showing me the wrong lap-times and split-times. In the end we were able to recover and put together a good lap and that’s good, but we need to work on our rhythm a bit more tomorrow morning.

Michael van der Mark 60 - 9th

This morning, when we went out on track, the grip was nowhere near like in testing two weeks ago. We had a few small issues with the bike that surely didn’t help, but with the changes made this afternoon the bike felt much much better, although for some reason the quick lap-time wasn’t forthcoming. We kept making small changes that gave us some more small improvements and in the end, with my last outing, I was finally happy with how the bike felt. Ninth place is better than how it looks on paper, as we’re all so close in the top 10. I’m happy to be in Superpole 2 and cannot wait for tomorrow.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

Nicky was able to be quick right from the get go, then in the afternoon he ran into a few issues with electronics which sort of upset his momentum a little. In the last attempt he was able to put together one really quick lap-time that catapulted him into first place. We are of course happy with his position but we need to work a little more on the problems we encountered today and on finding a good race race pace. Michael didn’t enjoy the same good start and it took a bit more to find the right set-up with the new conditions. He struggled a bit in getting the bike stopped but after some changes everything was better, although I think there is still room for improvement. He is not too far from the top so, all in all, things look pretty positive for tomorrow.