It has been a rainy opening day of action for the Honda WorldSBK Team at the TT Circuit Assen, the venue hosting the fourth round of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship. In the combined times of today’s two one-hour free practice sessions, Nicky Hayden and Michael van der Mark have claimed a fifth and a ninth place, respectively. Therefore, both riders are seeded directly into tomorrow morning’s Superpole 2, taking place at 10:55 local time (GMT +2).

For Nicky Hayden, this was his first real WorldSBK experience in wet conditions on Pirelli tyres, but after a much-needed hour of learning the 34-year-old American was able to get up to speed on-board his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP. Hayden improved steadily lap after lap and, in the closing stages of FP2, he managed to log a 1’50.070 that catapulted him in fifth place.

Michael van der Mark had a not-so-easy start to his home round compared to his teammate: the 23-year-old from Rotterdam crashed unhurt once per session, both times at turn 10. The second tumble happened due to the sudden worsening of track conditions towards the end of free practice two. Despite the late incident, the 1’54.280 lap-time set by the Dutch rider this afternoon proved to be quick enough for what is a very important top 10-finish ahead of Superpole.

Nicky Hayden 69 - 5th/1'54.070

It has been a good learning day for me. At some point in the season I would have had to try the bike and the Pirelli tyres in the wet, so it’s all experience for me. It was not easy at the beginning, because if you’re riding slowly in these conditions it takes longer for the tyres to warm up, so then it’s harder to get a good feeling from them. This morning I stayed out for almost the entire session and managed to get comfortable with the bike, while this afternoon we started to work a little bit with the setup. It has been a good day and a fifth place is definitely not a bad result; let’s see how it goes and what weather we encounter tomorrow.

Michael van der Mark 60 - 9th/1'54.280

Today went OK. It has been a long time since I last rode in the wet but my confidence was high, maybe a bit too much as I ended up on the gravel at turn 10. The bike was badly damaged, but the guys managed to get it fixed so quickly that I was back on track for the last ten minutes. So, a big thanks to them. On my last lap I even improved and the bike felt great. In the afternoon I knew the track was drying so I kept pushing, but towards the end it started raining again and I made a silly mistake, as I didn’t take into account that on the second part of the track the asphalt was wetter. The crash was very similar to the morning one, but fortunately this time I had virtually no damage to the bike. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, we’re in Superpole 2 and that’s what matters.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

Given the track conditions, for Nicky it was a very useful two-hours of track time. He did adapt very quickly as we made some adjustments to the bike in terms of balance, engine braking and rear brake settings, as there was a bit too much stopping power for wet conditions. In the end, he was able to put together a great lap and we’re happy with fifth place. Michael had a tumble this morning, which cost us some to fix but we got another 10 minutes of track-time in. In the afternoon he was able to improve a lot, despite another small fall, but I think he’s happy with how the bike feels and he is very confident for tomorrow.