While Pata Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark may have lagged behind somewhat on Friday’s time sheets, the Dutch rider is still confident of a strong showing in tomorrow’s race after putting in a decent long run in practice.
For the first time in his World Superbike career, the 2014 World Supersport champion enters a new season not backed by Honda after penning a deal with Paul Denning’s Crescent Racing squad halfway through 2016.
Van der Mark began the day in a relatively positive fashion, completing the top 10 on a 1m31.351s. However, the Dutchman failed to improve in the second session and dropped to 12th on the combined times.
“We wanted to check the lap time before the end of the session, but there was no improvement,” he said.
“We have to take the positives. We did the long run, which was quite OK; we just need to find a couple of tenths.”
The Ducthman will have to contest the first part of qualifying tomorrow, but this isn’t of too much concern to him as he believes the Yamaha will be strong in the first race of the 2017 season later in the day.
Van der Mark will use FP3 prior to Superpole to try and fix his issues on corner entry, with the double 2016 Phillip Island podium finisher eyeing a major set-up change in his quest for improvement.
“We struggled with entry into the corners, and this problem also came along during the tests. I think for tomorrow we should try a big step with the bike and hopefully we can improve.”
Looking ahead to his prospects on his maiden Yamaha appearance, van der Mark reckons the top five is very achievable; though he wouldn’t turn his nose up at a first WorldSBK victory either.
“I want to win. But I think top five is our goal and I think it’s quite possible.”
Alex Lowes, on the sister Pata Yamaha, will be watching his new team-mate contest SP1 from the garage tomorrow after easing his way into the top 10 this afternoon. The Briton was sixth quickest on a 1m30.817s, seven tenths from top spot.
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