Pata Honda riders Sylvain Guintoli and Michael van der Mark produced four solid results between them in yesterday’s two seventh-round World Superbike championship races at Portimao in Portugal, both of which were won by Jonathan Rea. Race one was interrupted by rain with just six laps remaining as Guintoli battled in a group for fifth place. Van der Mark, meanwhile, was recovering from an earlier electronics glitch and an off-track excursion that had left the 22-year-old Dutch rider down in 19th place.

 Both riders pitted their Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP machines for wet tyres on lap 14 and resumed the race in strong positions with Guintoli, 32, taking fifth place at the flag and van der Mark a hard-earned ninth. The second 20-lap race at the 4.592km Autodromo Internacional do Algarve was run in dry conditions with both Pata Honda riders enjoying good starts. Van der Mark fought his way through the field from 13th place on the grid to join his team-mate who was once more fighting for fifth place.

 Van der Mark settled in behind Guintoli and both riders passed Tom Sykes and Jordi Torres towards the end of the race, with the Dutch rider taking fifth place at the flag after a last corner pass on his French team-mate.

Sylvain Guintoli: “It’s been a good couple of races for us with solid finishes, so a positive weekend really. In race one I was in a group with a lot of fighting and overtaking going on and then, when the rain came, the team did a fantastic job with the pitstop. I had three or four quite fast laps fighting with Giugliano so that was quite a good performance for us. Race two was good, too – it was a fight all the way to the flag. Near the end of the race we were closing on Sykes and Torres and I managed to gain two places by overtaking them both but then lost one place back to Mikey. Overall it was a very close race but we’ll carry on the good work trying to develop the CBR package continue to close the gap. We’ve got some more things to test tomorrow - it’ll be a long day so I hope the conditions are good.”

Michael van der Mark: “I was a bit held up at the beginning of race one and I was not really fast enough, but it was getting better and better. I closed the gap to the group in front of me but then I had an electrical problem and after a couple of laps I had to switch the bike off and on again to re-set it. It worked OK after that but then I made a mistake and went off the track and then it started raining! The pitstop was quite OK and the last couple of laps was just about surviving because the grip was not there, but I was happy to get some points. I had a better start in race two and then there was a gap to Sylvain which I was able to close quite fast. I had quite good pace and just stayed behind him because I wanted to take some more points. Then we both came to Tom [Sykes] and Jordi [Torres] who had some problems and we passed them at the same time. Then in the last corner I did a big overtake on Sylvain and got those extra points!”