Saturday, June 21, 2014

Team Pata Honda's Rea & Haslam Talk Misano Qualifying for Round 7 of eni Superbike World Championship































Misano - Italy    21.06.2014
        
 
Hot work in Misano sun for Pata Honda
 
Pata Honda rider Jonathan Rea will start tomorrow’s two 21-lap seventh-round World Superbike championship races from the third row of the grid after setting the eighth-fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole session at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy.

With air temperatures in the low thirties and the track approaching 50˚C, the 27-year-old British rider fired his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP around the 4.226km Misano circuit in a time of 1m35.675s, 0.8s behind the pole position time of Tom Sykes.

Rea and his Pata Honda team-mate Leon Haslam have been working with their crews to optimise the effect of their CBRs’ engine-braking around Misano’s 16 turns but both riders believe that, while good progress has been made, further efforts are required before tomorrow’s races.

Haslam had two slow crashes in the 15-minute Superpole 2 session today and, although the 31-year-old was uninjured, he will start from 12th position on the grid tomorrow.
Jonathan Rea
Jonathan Rea - P8
I’m quite frustrated with this weekend because we thought Misano would be good for us. But when grip levels drop we really seem to struggle with engine brake issues. We’re having to tune the system for each circuit at the moment and don’t really have a good base setting. We haven’t been able to put our finger on the problem because we we’re OK with fresh tyres in the bike. I feel a bit better for the races tomorrow but eighth seems to be where I’ve been all weekend and I don’t want to be riding around for that again tomorrow. We need to engineer ourselves out of this position and try to find balance to get a smoother sensation from closing throttle to the corner apex and to keep the wheels in line. The crash that I had at the end of practice this morning showed the problem clearl y on the data so we know where to concentrate our efforts. We’ve not  been getting the best out of the bike this weekend but we’ll go out tomorrow and give it everything.
Leon Haslam
Leon Haslam - P12
We’ve made some good steps this weekend and there have been some positives. I was only 0.5s off in Free Practice 3 and ended up seventh, but we had a familiar problem with the qualifying tyre, which usually puts a spanner in the works for us. Two crashes during Superpole were certainly not ideal either, especially as I was on target for a 1m35s and probably something around P7. But we’ve had the same problems as Jonathan really, and we’ve been looking for more stability from the bike. We’ve got some work to do this evening for sure, and we’ll try hard for two good results tomorrow.
Pieter Breddels
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
Until the time we had to make grid positions in Superpole, Leon had been making quite good progress this weekend. Unfortunately, his setting didn’t really match the grip of his qualifying tyre and he had a couple of small crashes this afternoon, which is disappointing for him. We’ll try to find out more detail on the problem and improve things for tomorrow. For Jonathan, it’s been a little bit like the last couple of races and we’ve been one step behind on the settings. He’s quite close to the front and had to make some progress after FP2 yesterday, so he’s doing a good job. Hopefully, we can get the last couple of problems sorted for warm-up tomorrow and have two good races.
Weather
Sunny
Air
31°C
Track
49°C
Humidity
50%
  Qualifying Results - Results
 
1  Tom Sykes1m34.883GBRKAWASAKIKawasaki Racing Team
2  Davide Guigliano1m35.079ITADUCATIDucati Superbike Team
3  Sylvain Guintoli1m35.106FRAAPRILIAAprilia Racing Team
4  Loris Baz1m35.254FRAKAWASAKIKawasaki Racing Team
5  Marco Melandri1m35.316ITAAPRILIAAprilia Racing Team
6  Toni Elias1m35.404ESPAPRILIARed Devils Roma
7  Chaz Davies1m35.602GBRDUCATIDucati Superbike Team
8  Jonathan Rea1m35.675GBRHONDAPata Honda
9  Eugene Laverty1m36.043IRLSUZUKIVoltcom Crescent Suzuki
10  Niccolo Canepa1m36.404ITADUCATIAlthea Racing
11  Alex Lowes1m36.489GBRSUZUKIVoltcom Crescent Suzuki
12  Leon Haslam1m36.515GBRHONDAPata Honda
  Copyright-free images
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© 2014 Pata Honda
 
        

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