Yuki Takahashi builds on his race weekend to take his first Championship points, Kiyonari improves pace and speed before crashing out of the points zone in Race 2

“Generally speaking, I think we saw a positive trend over the weekend, although in terms of race results, we are still nowhere near where we would liked to be. Anyway, as I said, together with the team we completed constructive work regarding the bike’s setup. Thanks to the experience and data we gathered yesterday, we decided to try a change to the setup which resulted in a good improvement regarding both my feeling and speed. Also choosing a different Pirelli rear tyre spec (“A” on Saturday, “B” on Sunday) helped us to find more grip. So, already in the Superpole race I could ride better and be faster. In Race 2 we took another little step forward and finishing in the points was a nice way to conclude the weekend. I enjoyed the experience and once again I wish to thank the Moriwaki Althea Honda Team and HRC for this. I hope I was able to provide useful feedback to the engineers and I wish Leon (Camier) a speedy recovery.”

“Crashing is never good, but I was pushing hard during the entire Race 2 and was faster than I’d been all weekend. That’s the positive side of the coin. It has been a weekend with some ups and downs, especially this morning when we tried a change that did not work as we expected but at the same time it gave us a lot of good information. So, in the end, I think that by working closely together and analyzing all the data we were able to find a good direction. I think this was a useful weekend from a bike setup standpoint.”