Michael van der Mark put in a solid performance on his debut weekend with the Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK Team with ninth and seventh place finishes in Saturday and Sunday’s races respectively. The points won by the Dutchman at Phillip Island put him equal seventh overall in the standings after Round 1.

Van der Mark’s crew had made a late set-up change for the second race and it paid off, as he finished only 7.307s from the race winner Jonathan Rea and the new Yamaha rider felt that he had taken a good step forward.

The rider from Gouda in The Netherlands found real improvements with his YZF-R1 race set-up to ride to seventh in Race 2, two places higher than his Saturday performance and much closer to the podium finishers. Van der Mark was over 11 seconds off the rostrum in Race 1, a gap which was reduced to just over seven seconds in Race 2.

Afterwards he commented, “For me it’s very positive that we were much closer to the front and I was finally happy to ride my bike even when the tyres went down. So it’s a big positive for me in Race 2 and I just can’t wait for Thailand.”

He added, “I have the feeling that we finally found what I was looking for. I had to keep so much lean angle every day, but finally today the bike picked up and I could exit the corners so it gives us a lot of confidence.”