Michael van der Mark (PATA YAMAHA WorldSBK Official Team) took advantage of an eventful Race 2 at the Motul Portuguese Round to secure his third podium in nine races of the 2020 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship; moving into fifth place in the Championship as he looks to start closing the gap to the riders ahead of him.

Van der Mark looked to have made a move on Scott Redding (ARUBA.IT Racing – Ducati) to claim second place but a “false neutral” heading into the final corner, a problem he also had during Race 1 at the same part of the circuit. This allowed Redding to re-gain second place with van Der Mark unable to overtake the British rider after the technical issues.

Van der Mark said described his Sunday: “I passed Scott once because I quite a bit but I had to wait for him to make a mistake but as soon as I passed him, I had a neutral and the last few laps Scott was riding really well. I thought I was faster, but he was stronger, he didn’t make any mistakes like he did before. He defended really well. I tried everything in the last couple of laps but I didn’t want to crash as well.

“I’m really happy with this podium. This morning in the Superpole Race I wasn’t happy at all, I couldn’t do anything with the bike that I wanted to. In Race 2, the temperature went up. The pace was slower than yesterday, but we managed to be more consistent and I had a much better feeling with the bike. After the first few laps I just tried to stay calm because I saw people making mistakes and the pace was slowing quite a lot. I tried to stay calm and catch them one-by-one.”

It was an encouraging performance for van der Mark as the Dutchman secured a double podium over the weekend despite suffering a technical issue throughout two races across the weekend. Will he be able to push on from two podiums in Portimao as WorldSBK heads to MotorLand Aragom after a two-week break.

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