Team HRC left wanting at Misano after a promising Saturday

Team HRC was unable to bring home the desired results on the final day of the Misano WorldSBK race weekend after making a promising start with Alvaro Bautista in Saturday’s race 1. Two top ten results for the Spaniard today leave the squad wanting and ready to work hard to achieve their target.

Team HRC has now concluded the third round of the Superbike World Championship at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’. The 10-lap Tissot Superpole race got underway at 11am local time in hot and sunny conditions. Bautista and Haslam were lying eighth and eleventh through the opening stages, but each dropped back a couple of positions as the race progressed. Pushing hard to the line, the Spaniard closed the 10-lap sprint in tenth place, immediately followed by his team-mate, eleventh.

Lining up for race 2 later in the afternoon, the HRC riders both started from the fourth and fifth row based on their results in the earlier sprint race. Bautista made an excellent start and was lying seventh by the end of lap one. The Spaniard held this position for the best part of the race, losing just a little ground in the final stages to cross the line eighth. Haslam immediately made up a couple of positions to place eleventh, but his race was unfortunately brought to a premature end on lap three when he crashed through turn 1.

In the championship standings, Bautista now lies eleventh with 43 points while Haslam positions fourteenth with 18 points. Team HRC will soon return to the track for a testing session at the Navarra Circuit, a new entry on the 2021 calendar, on 21-22 June, before round 4 of the championship plays out at Haslam’s home track of Donington Park in the UK over the weekend of 2-4 July.