Stunning Superpole and Race Experience for Yamaha
Saturday, 2 April 2016 16:01 GMT
Both riders on the front row and in the top ten
Sylvain Guintoli and Alex Lowes began their Spanish Saturday in sensational form as Superpole got underway at Motorland Aragon. Qualifying in second and third respectively, the Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK riders lined up on the front row for Race 1 later the same afternoon.
A poor start by his standards saw Lowes find himself running sixth as the weekend's first battle began. Regrouping and fighting hard, the British rider was unluckily run wide, resulting in his demotion to 13th. Lowes pushed hard to regain the lost ground, taking positions quickly as he fought his way back to eighth despite diminishing tyre-life, the eight valuable points boosting his championship position to 12th. Pata Yamaha will now utilise the 18 laps of race data to allow Lowes to continue his fight in tomorrow afternoon's contest.
An impressive start saw Guintoli capitalise on his front row qualifying, running second as the opening laps unfolded. Sticking close to leader Sykes, the Frenchman fought hard to maintain position before impending tyre-wear issues took hold. Slowly losing places to the group around him Guintoli closed out the race in ninth, adding seven points to his tally and retaining his fifth position in the standings.
"Today was a more positive day than yesterday and it's clear that our outright pace is good after the performance in Superpole," said Lowes. "We still need to work on keeping that pace over race distance, but everything is still very new. We've highlighted a few areas we can improve on for tomorrow and hopefully we can take a couple of steps in terms of keeping our pace up. We need to keep working hard but we're hoping to make another step tomorrow, maybe not to win but to get closer to the front group!"
"Today had some very good points," agreed Guintoli. "We managed to show that on new tyres and on the qualifying tyres there is a lot of potential in the YZF-R1. I got a very good start in race one, had really good pace and felt comfortable and then from about lap four or five I started to lose a lot of grip from the rear and I just wasn't able to stay with the front and keep my position, but we know that every session and every race is information that we can use to gain experience to make the bike more efficient on longer runs, and to learn how to not overstress the rear tyre."
The Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK Team is back on track at Motorland Aragon tomorrow for the concluding WorldSBK race of the weekend at 13:00 local time (GMT +2).