A positive first SBK outing for Team HRC at Phillip Island

“In the end P6 is not bad, also considering this was my first SBK race in fully wet conditions, even more challenging at this particular track. I learned a lot about the bike and the tyres during the race and felt good, able to make up several positions already in the first six or seven laps. And towards the end I was able to maintain good pace enough and defend myself from Redding so I can say I’m happy enough, but not totally because I know we could have done more. The Superpole is what annoyed me most because, after lapping in 1’29.7 in the morning, I was expecting to be faster. Maybe not on the front row but definitely the second. But I made a small mistake on my first lap with the first soft tyre, through turn four, and only managed to complete a "so and so" second lap, which was almost half a second slower than what I did in FP3 but ultimately my best in qualifying because I didn’t have a good feeling with the second soft tyre. So I’m a little disappointed about that but at least we did well in the race. We will see how weather conditions are tomorrow and try to use the Superpole race to improve our grid position for race 2, though this won’t be easy at a track where it’s very hard to overtake. But I have good feeling with the bike so let’s see!”

“We are pleased with our race after such a difficult start to the weekend. In wet conditions I had real confidence in the front of the bike and was able to make passes and keep good pace to make up ground from what was a challenging grid position, and this is very important. It’s also “positive” that we experienced the same difficulties in the wet that we’ve experienced in dry conditions, in fact the lack of traction was even more evident in the wet. So in a way this gave us confirmation as well as lot of data that we can analyse and use to try to make a change to the setup tomorrow. Having said that, I want to thank the team because, like me, they never give up and have worked really hard again here. We will get there!”