SBK
Worls Supersport Valencia, Honda preview
03 aprile 2008 Honda riders now fill the top three championship places in the 2008 series, after Andrew Pitt (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda CBR600RR) won the second round in Australia last month. Josh Brookes (Hannspree Stiggy Motorsports Honda CBR600RR) finished within touching distance of the win at Phillip Island himself after a fantastically unpredictable race. With the 20 points he earned for second added to his 13 points from Qatar, Brookes now leads Honda privateer Joan Lascorz by four points at the top of the table. By securing third in the most recent race, in Australia, Robbin Harms (Hannspree Stiggy Motorsports Honda CBR600RR) is fifth in the rankings at present, on the same 25 point level as Pitt and another seasoned campaigner, Broc Parkes. Jonathan Rea (Hannspree Ten Kate Honda CBR600RR) has had two intense early experiences in his rookie WSS season, having raced and qualified 5th in Australia, helping to make up for his no-score in the first round. He is currently ninth in the standings. Craig Jones (Parkalgar Honda CBR600RR) is out to wipe the memory of his disappointing 16th place in Australia from his mind, and attempt to repeat or better the third place he scored in the opening race of the year at Losail. Gianluca Nannelli (Hannspree Althea Honda CBR600RR), like most of his main competitors on Honda machinery, tested at the official FGSport sessions recently. He set an ego-boosting equal best time of the test after two days on track. He will not be joined at the Valencia race by his 2008 team-mate Tommy Hill (Hannspree Althea Honda CBR600RR) as the English rider continues to recover from his long list of pre-season injures. Twenty year-old Andrea Antonelli will once more substitute for Hill. Brookes said: "Valencia is not my favourite track, but I did good lap times there in the pre-season test back in November. I think the improvements the team and I have made since then lead me to believe we have a good chance of winning. After the first two rounds, I am very happy to be leading the championship. There are many races to come, but I have confidence in my team and in myself and will try my best to be fast and consistent." Pitt said: "At the test in March we didn't get to set a fast final time because of a red flag incident but our race pace was really good. I did a 16 -lap run on one tyre and still managed to stay in the 1m 37s until the end. That shows how competitive we can be. We made a bit of progress on our qualifying settings, so I am happy with that too. I'm confident and I'm looking forward to the next race." Harms said: "After the success in the last two rounds, all I want to do is race. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to test at Valencia with the team in November as I was still recovering form my shoulder injury. But I have a lot of confidence in the team and know they collected lot of valuable data then, so I think we will be OK." Rea said: "We had a big breakthrough with the setup on the final day at the Valencia tests last month. The team put in a lot of work and helped me go out there with a different attitude. On the first day we were over a second off the fastest lap time but we finally got the gap down to 0.4 seconds. We managed to do a full race distance simulation and showed consistency throughout." Nannelli, currently 17th overall on six points said: "Testing at Valencia gave us a very good single lap time. But it's not just the lap time; it's the race time that matters most. I think we've still got a bit of work to do to find the best balance. I want to find a better set up for my bike during practice at Valencia to be ready for the race." |
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