Sylvain Guintoli revealed that he was still riding at less than 100% fitness despite a solid start to his championship defence at Phillip Island. The Frenchman was edged into seventh by Tom Sykes in race one before improving to fifth in race two but admitted to feeling dehydrated at the end of both, something Sylvain feels is a legacy of his testing injury.
“I tried everything I could and we did both races with very different set-ups, although the results were much the same. But at least we’ve got some good data that we can work on now. After missing so much winter testing, I’ve really been treating this weekend as another live test session because I’m still not quite yet clicking with the bike. We’ll just keep working though and come back strong in Thailand. To be honest, I’ve never felt so physically drained after two races. I think the injury from Jerez must have somehow added to the dehydration because I felt really ill during both the races. I’ll focus on recovering as much as possible before the next races now. But one of the highlights of the weekend for me was being on the track with Troy Bayliss. He had already retired when I came to SBK but we had a few laps scrapping out there in race two which was a bit special!”
Guintoli trails early championship leaders Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam by 25 points but PATA Honda’s technical co-ordinator Pieter Breddels is satisfied, believing the team have done well to limit the damage.
“We didn’t have an easy first weekend with Sylvain but we kept changing the CBR to give him more feeling for the race and he finished seventh in race one. For race two we changed the bike again and he finished fifth. He’s fifth in the points and considering everything that’s not too bad. We’ll study everything to consider the best way forward but I’m confident that we’ll be stronger in Thailand.”
