Barni Racing Ducati’s Leandro Mercado had another pair of good results in the seventh race day of the year, which took place last Sunday at Portimao’s Autodromo do Algarve. Last year’s STK1000 title winner was running as high as 5^th in the first encounter, before a rain shower forced riders back to the pits for a tyre change.

In what was the team’s first flag-to-flag situation, Mercado made his way back to the track in eighth but was able to maintain the position up to the chequered flag. Following a good start to the second encounter, Mercado did a couple of mistakes in the early stages and, despite a strong pace, the Argentine was not able to fill the gap with the group of riders ahead.

Mercado now sits ninth in the Championship standings, tied in points with eighth place Michael van der Mark. Furthermore, he is the only other rider apart from Jonathan Rea to have scored points in every race of the year so far.

“It has been a good weekend” a confident Mercado said. “We were able to score some important points for the championship race. The first encounter was fun and hard fought: I battled my way up to fifth with Guintoli, Giugliano and Baiocco before the rain came. This was our first flag to flag situation. In the end the eighth place was a good result. Race 2 was good too, I moved off the line well but I made a couple of mistakes that cost me a lot of ground. Despite a good pace I wasn’t able to catch the pack ahead of me. We still need to improve but I’m really confident ahead of Misano!”