Superbike Assen: Difficult round for Yamaha

Prosecco DOC Dutch Round Superbike Race 2 – The second heat of the Prosecco DOC Dutch Round was a real gamble linked to the tires and the weather conditions, which brought rain after a sunny start to the day: for the WorldSBK riders, therefore, a wet track and pit, necessary given that the asphalt dried out during the race.

It wasn't an easy heat for the Pata Yamaha team and the final result still penalizes Alex Lowes, seventh, and Sylvain Guintoli, eleventh, who had also been very fast in Tissot-Superpole.

Given the unpredictability of the weather, Lowes started the race with a completely wet configuration, while Guintoli, thinking that the surface would dry almost immediately, had instead mounted the intermediate tire on the rear, a choice shared only by Reiterberger of the Althea BMW team and which proved to be wrong.
The Frenchman struggled from the start, struggling with the lack of rear grip and thus losing precious time, so much so that during the first laps he actually found himself last.
It went better after the tire change, halfway through the race, the speed increased and Guintoli crossed the finish line in eleventh position, earning 5 points which takes him to eighth place in the standings.

The team will return to the track at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy, at the end of April for the fifth round of the championship.

“It was a difficult race today because we had to deal with the unknown weather and particular conditions on the track” – he said alex lowes – “I pushed hard on the YZF-R1, without taking too many risks and tried to manage the pit stop in the best possible way. It's an important result for points, but we're not where we would have liked to be, so we have to continue working to improve and develop the bike, we're looking at Imola with optimism."

“The conditions were really different today” – he agreed Sylvain Guintoli – “I thought the track would dry much quicker than it did, and so I opted for the intermediate tyre, but I struggled a lot. According to my plan I should have had a good performance with the intermediate tires, and then changed to the slicks, but unfortunately in the first five minutes of the race I lost too much time and did not reach the necessary temperature on the rear. So I had to change strategy, because we had lost so much time. It was a gamble and my strategy didn't pay off."