The Honda HRC Team has concluded the seventh round of the Superbike World Championship at Donington Park with a hard-fought top ten result for Iker Lecuona in Race 2, while Xavi Vierge also scored points. Despite the challenges, both riders climb one position in the overall standings and are now tied on points, with Vierge seventh and Lecuona eighth.
After a brief morning warm-up, factory rider Xavi Vierge and Iker Lecuona were ready for the Superpole race.
Lining up for the ten-lap sprint on the fourth and sixth row of the grid respectively, Iker and Xavi were unable to fully exploit the start, finding themselves fifteenth and sixteenth through lap one. Lecuona appeared to find a little more pace in the second half of the race, but his efforts were unfortunately thwarted when a small technical issue emerged on lap seven and put a premature end to his fight. Having gained one position in the early stages, Xavi moved up into thirteenth place towards the end of the sprint, a position he was able to hold to the line.
The second and final 23-lap SBK race ran in the early afternoon in sunny conditions. Fifteenth through the first turns, Lecuona was soon up into twelfth. Although a gap had begun to open up in front of him, the Spaniard was undeterred, steadily closing in and breaking into the top ten in the later stages. Teammate Vierge was tasked with making up ground from seventeenth, the Spaniard immediately getting to work and making up positions right from the early stages. Inside the points zone, Xavi held fifteenth for a good part of the race before progressing to thirteenth in the final stages but was ultimately handed a one-position penalty for exceeding track limits on the final lap.
Competing as a wildcard this weekend, Honda test rider Tommy Bridewell placed eighteenth in the Superpole race but unfortunately crashed out of race 2.
Next up for the Honda HRC team is round eight, to take place at the Balaton Circuit in Hungary on 25-27 July.
