Nicky Hayden and Michael van der Mark have taken fourth and fifth places, respectively, in today’s 20-lap, twelfth-round WorldSBK race one at Jerez de la Frontera in Spain. Courtesy of today’s results, the two Honda WorldSBK standard bearers managed to further consolidate their positions in the championship standings, with fourth-placed van der Mark now 30 points ahead of his teammate Hayden in fifth.

Hayden did not enjoy the best of starts from row two, as his bike almost stalled off the line. The American rider lost a couple of places but soon got up to speed to battle for sixth with Xavi Fores, before the Spaniard crashed out – along with Davide Giugliano – during the second lap. The ‘Kentucky Kid’ was then promoted to fourth after Lowes fell out of the race on lap 5. With a clear track ahead of him, the 35-year-old American pushed hard to bridge the gap to third place but as riders entered lap 10, he was unable keep the pace of the rivals ahead and started to lose some ground.

Coming from eleventh on the grid to fifth on lap five – when he got the better of Jordi Torres – Michael van der Mark started to close in on his teammate. As the two riders entered the final lap, they were separated by only half a second. The 23-year-old Dutchman did all he could to make a final move on Hayden and the two ended up almost side by side at the finish line, with van der Mark coming short of a fourth-place finish by just 0.039s.

The second and final race of the Spanish WorldSBK round will get underway tomorrow at 13:00 local time (GMT +2).

Nicky Hayden 69 - 4th

I didn’t make a great start but I got up to fourth, picking up a few positions and moving further up after some crashes ahead of me. The bike was working quite well, and the team has done a good job with the set-up and I was trying to close the gap down to Jonathan Rea. At halfway distance, I started pushing the front too much, so Johnny was able to pull a gap on me. After that, I just tried to manage my gap to Michael and come home with fourth. Overall, it wasn’t a disaster but I would have liked to have got up there to try and mix it up with those front three. At the moment, in normal dry conditions they’re just a cut above us and they’re doing a good job, but that’s what we’ll try to do tomorrow.


Michael van der Mark 60 - 5th

During Superpole I put in a really fast lap on race tyres and, when I put the qualifier on, I had a big moment, but I was still happy with my lap-time. At the end, everybody was so fast so I got pushed down the order. I had quite a good start from P11 and I was lucky that some guys ahead of me crashed out of the race. It took me a couple of laps to pass Torres, but then I was able to make up some ground to Nicky. I didn’t have the best of feeling with the front towards the end and, despite being very close to him, I didn’t want make a mess by trying to out brake him. I hoped he would have run a bit wide in order to catch him at the finish line but that didn’t happen. Fifth is a good result for us today, especially given our starting position; we’re still quite safe in fourth in the standings and I am looking forward to race two.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

We tried something in free practice 3, although we knew that track conditions would change a lot for the race. Both riders were quite happy with the bike so we decided not to make too many more adjustments. When Superpole came, they both said they could have been a little bit faster, but it was a really close session. In the race, Nicky was doing well and almost caught Jonathan for third, but then he simply couldn’t hold on to the same pace in the second half of the race. Meanwhile, Michael did a good job in passing Torres and closing on Nicky, but it was just a little bit too far away to make a comfortable move. For tomorrow, we’ll evaluate a different tyre choice at the front, in order to improve our pace for the latter part of the race.