Michael van der Mark wants to bring his PATA Honda home with two solid points finishes at Misano after finally returning to form at Portimao last time out. The Dutch rookie had scored just seven points in four races following his Assen double podium but fifth in race two in Portugal saw him back to his best once again.
With van der Mark expecting the Honda CBR1000RR to be competitive around Misano, the reigning World Supersport champion is hopeful of matching his home round exploits.
“I’m really looking forward to riding at Misano this weekend because it’s a track that I really enjoy and to ride it on the Fireblade should be great fun! After a bad run of results, it was really good to finish both races in the top ten at Portimao and that’s definitely going to be my biggest target for Misano. Hopefully, we can have a weekend without any problems and get back to challenging some of the front guys again like earlier in the season.”
Since the Portuguese round, Sylvain Guintoli enjoyed an outing at the Isle of Man TT and although he admits Misano will be an altogether different experience, the reigning champion is aiming high this weekend.
“I’m still buzzing from the parade lap I did last week at the Isle of Man TT, except it wasn’t a parade lap as we were doing almost 200kph down Bray Hill and I saw 270kph on the CBR’s clocks over the mountain! What a perfect bike for the job though, as John McGuinness showed in the Senior TT on Friday. But now it’s time to focus back on our own CBR for Misano and continue the hard work that the team has been doing recently. We had a test after the Portimao round and tried a couple of new things that we think could improve our race pace some more. I really like Misano and it’ll be good to try the new surface there and chase more top five finishes and our first podium of the season.”
