Pata Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark is thrilled to cap off his home round in Assen with a fighting fourth place after crashing out of Saturday’s encounter.
Saturday proved a difficult day for the home hero, an average qualifying performance leaving him eighth and contact with his team-mate at Turn 1 dropping him further down the order. Trying to recover lost ground, he tumbled off in the opening stages.
Starting from 11th, van der Mark had his work cut out, but a strong showing in morning warm-up had him confident of a good result. Scything his way through the pack in the early stages, the Yamaha rider soon found himself bearing down on Ducati’s Chaz Davies.
Lapping faster than the Welshman, a podium looked possible. But a huge moment exiting Turn 11 and a change in balance had him rethinking his strategy.
“I am pretty happy with that,” enthused the Dutchman.
“I did what I could and I was happy with my race pace. Every time I overtook a rider I made it stick.
“I was closing on Chaz Davies, then I had a couple of scary moments at one of the fastest points of the track. It is one of my strongest points at this circuit, so I knew I could make up a lot of time there.
“But by then the win had changed and the bike was maybe balanced a little too much towards the rear, so the front was in the air. I had a big wobble, after that I decided to do my own race as I had a big gap to the rider behind.”
Though setting a blistering pace, van der Mark’s afternoon was far from trouble free. He took a knock to his arm in his race one crash and was left in quite a significant amount of discomfort, which affected him in the closing stages of Sunday’s outing.
“To be honest, after yesterday’s crash, the last four or five laps I had so much pain in my arm,” he admitted.
“The Doctors did a great job to give me some painkillers which allowed me to race, and if you had said I would get fourth position before the race, I would have taken this very happily.”
Team-mate Alex Lowes also crashed out of the first race and started today’s encounter from 15th. Not totally happy with the set-up of his YZF-R1, not helped by two big falls on Friday, Lowes valiantly fought his way through to complete the top five.
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