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  - 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  - 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  - 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 Sykes 1m34.883 GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team 2   Davide Guigliano 1m35.079 ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team 3   Sylvain Guintoli 1m35.106 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team 4   Loris Baz 1m35.254 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team 5   Marco Melandri 1m35.316 ITA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team 6   Toni Elias 1m35.404 ESP APRILIA Red Devils Roma 7   Chaz Davies 1m35.602 GBR DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team 8   Jonathan Rea 1m35.675 GBR HONDA Pata Honda 9   Eugene Laverty 1m36.043 IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki 10   Niccolo Canepa 1m36.404 ITA DUCATI Althea Racing 11   Alex Lowes 1m36.489 GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki 12   Leon Haslam 1m36.515 GBR HONDA Pata Honda   Copyright-free images © 2014 Pata Honda