Pata Honda World Superbike

The Pata Honda World Superbike Team helped get the 2013 championship officially underway in today’s opening practice sessions at Phillip Island in Australia. New team member Leon Haslam ended the day sixth fastest behind provisional pole sitter, Michel Fabrizio, while Jonathan Rea was just two tenths of a second slower in tenth.

After an overcast morning, today’s first qualifying session took place in warm and dry conditions at the 4.445km Phillip Island circuit, following four days of testing which started last week.

Following a winter re-surface, the track is showing no signs of being any less abrasive on tires and both Pata Honda riders have been working on seeking a compromise of grip and longevity to get through Sunday’s two 22-lap, first-round races.

Leon Haslam – P6, 1m31.687s

It felt really good today and we were just concentrating hard on our race set-up. We got a tire that we did race distance on and the lap times were as good as anybody’s so I’m happy with that. A couple of tires are definitely not the option – they’re just blistering and I think a couple of people are suffering with that. I think I was only one of a few riders that didn’t use the soft tire this afternoon so I was quite happy with the lap time, which felt quite easy and comfortable, and I’m happy with the progression we’re making. We’ll spend tomorrow working on tire life and fine-tuning the electronics, which seem to change day-by-day with the weather and the wind. It’s getting stronger each day so I hope it doesn’t change direction tomorrow – otherwise we’ll have to start all over again!

Jonathan Rea – P10, 1m31.884s

I was excited and nervous this morning, starting a new season, but it was quite tough witnessing the Supersport session this morning, which was full of mayhem and five red flags. I was a little unsure about the track conditions to start but we worked slowly and surely through some electronics changes but, unfortunately, my comments were a little strange because we were struggling to make progress with my feeling on the bike. In the second session this afternoon we did a long run and I picked up a much better rhythm at the end and I felt a lot better on the bike. We still need to do more work with old tires but we’re not so far away on used tire pace. I feel we still need to do some work to get an out-and-out lap time. We’ve had a long de-brief and I think it’s clear that we can still improve the engine braking and the initial touch of the throttle.

Pieter Breddels – Technical Co-ordinator

I think we’ve had quite a reasonable day. Every time Leon went out he was just fast and he didn’t really bother to put in a tire to achieve a lap time, so that’s looking good. With Jonathan we’re still fine-tuning settings and we did a long run this afternoon. It was good to give him a bit more of a rhythm but I think we have to do more with the settings and compare to the test here, when we were a bit quicker. The biggest issue here is tire life and finding a tire that will do the distance.