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Race 1 at the Gaerne Spanish Round saw good results for the Honda World Superbike Team with Nicky Hayden holding off his teammate Michael van der Mark for fourth in the final stages.

The #JerezWorldSBK round sees Hayden riding at a track he knows so well from his years of MotoGP™ racing and testing at the circuit and after qualifying in fifth place on the grid he pushed hard in Saturday’s race.

The American rider did not get the best start as he wheelied off the line but he ran a blistering pace in the early stages and managed to get close to the podium fight ahead of him. However in the final stages fending off his Honda colleague for fourth was more of a concern.

Explaining his race, Hayden commented, “Obviously it is not a disaster, fourth place is a solid result for us. The first laps were not too bad, when I got into fourth I was feeling fairly good and thought I had a chance to maybe fight with Jonny (Rea). I took a couple of tenths out of him for a few laps I think and kind of kept him close, but I had a little problem with the bike after about half the race. The rear dropped a bit, so I struggled a bit with that. But the bike works really well here, we have tested here and got good data. So the goal for tomorrow is to improve a bit and give that front three a little bit more trouble.”

On the threat from his teammate he added, “I had to try and manage the gap to Michael. For sure he was coming strong so I had to keep an eye on that. Like I said fourth certainly is no disaster but we don’t want to be satisfied with that, I’m a bit disappointed not to be stronger. But the team is working well and I’m optimistic for tomorrow.

For his part, Van der Mark had to come from further down the order having qualified 11^th on the grid, despite going under the previous lap record set in 2015 by Tom Sykes.

The Dutchman described his race, saying, “Nicky had a big gap and went away and then towards the end I was closing in on him again. I struggled with the front tyre to be honest. The rear we knew would be difficult to manage but we didn’t have the problems with it that I had with the front in the race. So it was difficult but on the last lap I was pretty close and I wanted to pass him but I just wasn’t close enough. I didn’t want to take the risk to crash at the last corner. So it’s another top five and good points. I just wanted to beat Nicky, but we got a good result for the whole team.”