News

Sylvain Guintoli scored his first podium of the 2016 season, taking his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP to third place in the first of two 12th round World Superbike championship races at Magny-Cours in France. His Pata Honda team-mate, Michael van der Mark, also put in two stunning performances, starting from 15th place on the grid and taking fourth place in each of Sunday’s races, both of which were won by Jonathan Rea.

Guintoli was relishing the prospect of a wet race after yesterday’s rain failed to dry overnight and he was duly rewarded with a damp 4.411km track this morning. Starting from fifth place on the grid, the 33-year-old delighted the partisan crowd with a good start and kept in touch with the leaders, passing Chaz Davies for third and never looking back.

The French rider was not so confident with his dry set-up but those were the conditions as race two began. After another strong start, Guintoli settled into a relatively lonely sixth place and brought his CBR home for a solid points haul.

Van der Mark endured a difficult qualifying session yesterday at Magny-Cours and ended up on the outside of the fifth row of the grid. However, superb starts in both races allowed him to get close to the leading riders in both wet and dry conditions.

In race two particularly, the 22-year-old Dutch ace showed impressive pace by riding around the outside of Leon Haslam on to the back straight at Magny-Cours. Van der Mark’s times in the closing laps of the race matched those of the podium finishers and he takes renewed confidence into the final round of the season at Losail in Qatar in two weeks.

Sylvain Guintoli: “It was good to grab the opportunity with the wet conditions in race one and bring home the first podium of the season. Race two was dry but it was OK – P6 was not too bad, and I would definitely have taken that yesterday morning. We made a few changes from the last dry session in FP4 yesterday to improve the pace and we used the SC0 tyre. I thought the other tyre would drop in performance but the guys in front seemed to be on that one. The important thing was that it was two solid races. To be on the podium at home was what I really wanted to do, so it’s been a good performance from the whole team. Now we’re looking forward to the final round in Qatar to finish the season on a high”.

Michael van der Mark: “It’s been an awesome day because we’ve had some problems all weekend, not only on Friday and Saturday but also in Superpole yesterday. I wasn’t really happy and then the warm-up was wet this morning. It was OK though, and I had such a good start to race one. I took a lot of risks but the bike felt really good, even though I missed a bit of acceleration. I was really happy with fourth and happy for Sylvain to be on the podium because he also worked really hard. For race two we changed some settings on the front for the dry and it worked perfectly. I got a really good start again and fought my way round the outside and ended up in a nice battle with Sylvain. There was a gap to Leon [Haslam] and I had to make a bit of a move to get by him. Our bike is not quite as fast as his and I had to make so much spee d going on to the back straight that I had no choice really. I was not really sure about making the move but I was quite happy with how it worked out! Then I saw the pace of Sykes in third was dropping a little so I kept pushing in case it dropped more. But I’m really happy with another fourth place and want to thank the guys in my crew who did a fantastic job.”