An uphill climb for Team HRC in Sunday’s WorldSBK races at Donington
Donington Park CircuitRound six of the Superbike World Championship has concluded today at Donington Park, with Team HRC and official riders Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge completing the races but with results that fell below their expectations.
Round six of the Superbike World Championship has concluded today at Donington Park, with Team HRC and official riders Iker Lecuona and Xavi Vierge completing the races but with results that fell below their expectations.
The action got underway later than usual in a change to the standard Sunday schedule. Riders lined up on the grid for the 10-lap Superpole race, which began at 1pm local time (CET-1). As per their qualifying results yesterday, Lecuona again started from thirteenth on the grid and Vierge from seventeenth. Having made a good start, Iker was straight up into the top ten on lap one, with Xavi behind him in fourteenth place. Unfortunately, the pair struggled to match the pace of those immediately ahead, gradually slipping back to fourteenth and fifteenth position. In the final stages, both were able to make up one place, with Lecuona finishing thirteenth and Vierge fourteenth.
Later in the day, the factory riders were back on track for the third and final race of the weekend, which ran in similarly cool and cloudy conditions to the previous sprint race. A multi-rider incident on lap one immediately saw the race halted with a red flag. The race was restarted a short time later and reduced to a distance of 22 laps, with Lecuona and Vierge lining up in twelfth and fourteenth position respectively on the grid. Vierge made a strong start and was lying tenth by the end of lap one, while Lecuona lost a few positions through the first turns and found himself fifteenth. Thirteenth at the mid-race stage, Vierge unfortunately had to pull into the pits on lap fifteen due to a small technical issue problem, while team-mate Lecuona crossed the line fourteenth, even if consistently improving his pace in the second half of the race.
After the first six rounds of the WorldSBK championship, Vierge places tenth in the general standings with a total of 92 points, while team-mate Lecuona lies twelfth with a tally of 66. Team HRC will next race at the Imola circuit in Italy, the stage for round seven, which will play out over the weekend of 14-16 July.
It was a hard weekend honestly, and we struggled quite a lot. It’s true that yesterday I crashed, but even without that I was struggling and the same went for the sprint race. But there have been some positives, in that we changed the base of our bike setup before race 2, taking a bit of a gamble to be honest, but it was something we had to try to understand and find a way forward. Straight after the start it was tough and on the very first lap, I almost crashed through turn seven but luckily, I was able to stay on the bike and just keep going. And lap by lap, by maintaining focus and continuing to push, the situation improved and my pace too. In fact the entire second part of the race was a progression, I made up a few seconds on the group ahead and the lap times were really good. So, even if fourteenth is not even close to where we aim to be, that part of the race was good. We must now analyze everything and understand what happened.
Of course this weekend was a tough one for us, and we didn’t expect to struggle so much here really. As always me and the team worked very hard to try and achieve the maximum possible in every session. Today we were unable to score points in the end - in the sprint race we were not fast enough and in race 2 we made a good start and were lying mid-pack but unfortunately we had a small problem that forced me to pit. It’s the first time it’s happened to be fair, and better for it to happen in a race where we were struggling anyway rather than during a weekend where we’re fighting for a strong result. So thank you again to everyone for their hard work, we will continue on to try and improve and fight for the positions everyone on the team deserves.
