Michael van der Mark claimed a seventh place finish at the end of the 18-lap opening race at Imola’s ‘Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari’, the circuit hosting the fifth round of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship this weekend. His Honda WorldSBK team mate Nicky Hayden crossed the line in ninth position after running as high as seventh until the final two laps of the encounter.

Earlier today, Hayden and van der Mark successfully made it through Superpole 1 and, after the final qualifying session, they found themselves in ninth and eleventh place on the grid, respectively. The race started with a short delay due to a warm-up lap crash that involved two riders at the back of the field. Both Honda riders were able to maintain their qualifying positions in the early laps and, as the race entered its second half, they headed a six-way pack battling for seventh place.

On the penultimate lap, van der Mark made a successful move on his teammate, while Hayden had to give up one more place and was ninth at the chequered flag. After the traditional 15-minute warm-up scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:25, the second and final race of the Italian round will get underway at 13:00 local time (GMT +2).

Michael van der Mark 60 - 7th

This morning we started with a completely different set-up compared to yesterday and the feeling with the bike was definitely better. In Superpole 1 I found a bike that was much easier to ride and on the last lap, I had no time on my dashboard. I only realised I was first when I came back to the pits and that was such a relief! In Superpole 2, I had to give up on my lap with race tyres as Sylvain (Guintoli) crashed in front of me; when we restarted we went immediately for a Q tyre but I struggled with front grip and couldn’t improve. As soon as the race started, I found myself struggling while trying to stop the bike, so I knew it was going to be a long one. In the end I managed to pass Nicky for seventh, though. I have to be happy with the points we scored today but we need to solve our issues with the front grip if we want to be further up tomorrow.

Nicky Hayden 69 - 9th

I must thank the team, because today the bike was much better than yesterday. They worked overnight and improved several things; we were able to drop a couple of seconds from my lap-time and advance into Superpole 2. In the early laps of the race I wasn’t going too badly but I had some little problems under braking as I couldn’t get the bike stopped as well as I wanted, so I had to slow down my pace and then I lost two places in the last two laps. We cannot be happy with the result but we were much closer today than yesterday so maybe if we can take one more step, tomorrow we can put up a good fight.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

We made some changes to the chassis settings after this morning and things improved a little bit. In Superpole 2 Nicky made a couple of small mistakes during his flying lap, while with Michael we made the usual couple of adjustments to make the take the best out of the qualifying tyre, but this time they didn’t work. They both got a good start to the race but couldn’t keep the pace of the front-runners and, in the end, they battled for seventh place. Both pointed out that they couldn’t get the bike stopped the way they wanted and this means we still need to find the right combination between chassis settings and front tyre. We are currently analysing the data and we will come up with a plan for tomorrow morning and race two.