The Honda WorldSBK Team has completed its first day at the third round of the 2016 FIM Superbike World Championship, which is currently underway at the MotorLand Aragón circuit in Spain. Both Michael van der Mark and Nicky Hayden successfully qualified to tomorrow’s Superpole 2, after claiming third and seventh, respectively, in the combined classification of today’s two free practice sessions.

The day started really well for the Dutch-based squad, with Hayden and van der Mark finishing the first session, which was held under cooler conditions, in second and third place. As the afternoon approached, conditions got significantly warmer, with track temperatures rising from 17°C to 40°C. This change necessitated a considerable amount of extra work on the setup of the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machines.

After testing some changes at the front of his bike, van der Mark was able to elevate himself to third place in the latter stages of free practice 2, logging a 1’51.337. Following a small crash at turn 14 in the early minutes of the session, Hayden and the team worked hard to make up for time lost and were able to salvage a seventh place finish on a final attempt before the chequered flag.

The team will have 15 more minutes of free practice tomorrow morning before Superpole 2 and race 1, scheduled at 10:55 and 13:00 local time (GMT+2), respectively.

Michael van der Mark 60 - 3rd/1’51.337

Third place is a great result for today, especially because my feeling at the front was not perfect. We still have some work ahead of us in order to be ready for the race, but we know what areas need our attention and the bike is proving to be really competitive here. We made a big improvement this afternoon and we were able to be both fast and consistent, which is good news. Our gap to Tom Sykes is still a bit bigger than I’d have hoped but we’re improving in the right direction.

Nicky Hayden 69 - 7th/1'51.545

This morning we missed some minutes at the beginning of the session. It was quite cold and windy, the same for everybody else of course, but it took me a little bit more time to find the limit. We had a small crash at the beginning of the afternoon session, which meant that we lost some track time, but the team did a great job in getting the bike fixed. I was able eventually to get back out and do enough to advance to Superpole 2, so let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager

Our morning performance showed that we now have a base setting for the bike that can work quite well on very different type of tracks. In the afternoon many of our rivals were able to get up to speed but eventually Michael was able to stay in the top 3, which is a great news. We tried some new settings at the front, which did not work out exactly the way we wanted, and in the end we didn’t have enough time to put the previous setup back. Nicky had a small crash that cost us some time, but overall he’s quite happy with a bike. We know what we need to do so we are confident for tomorrow.