SSP riders Pawi and Toba take on a wet Assen
Round three of the Supersport World Championship is now in play at the TT Circuit Assen in The Netherlands, with the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team having completed Friday’s sessions in predominantly wet conditions.
Riders Khairul Idham Pawi and Kaito Toba were out in the late morning for the one and only Supersport free practice. Unfortunately, the session was severely conditioned by the weather, the session beginning on a damp track before rain began to fall in earnest mid-way through proceedings, which meant that teams had little to no preparation time ahead of the afternoon’s Superpole. With a 1’54.180 set right at the end as the track began to dry, Toba placed eighteenth, with team-mate Pawi closing twenty-seventh with a time of 1’57.014.
The track remained partly wet as the afternoon’s qualifying session got underway, but conditions already looked to be an improvement with respect to the morning’s practice. Pawi wasted no time and quickly lowered his earlier reference by six seconds, setting a 1’51.642 that remained his best lap of the day. The rain returned with twenty minutes still to go, and this meant that half the SSP field, Pawi and Toba included, finished with references outside of the 105% qualifying time limit. Toba’s fastest time was a 1’52.186, set right at the end of the phase in full wet conditions. The Superpole results meant that the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda rider qualified twenty-fifth (Pawi) and twenty-seventh (Toba) for the weekend’s Supersport races.
Khairul Idham Pawi P25
“Really difficult conditions for us today, in both practice and Superpole. The weather changed very quickly and often, and unfortunately, we didn’t have enough dry track time to be able to improve sufficiently. We’ll keep working and try to do more tomorrow.”
Kaito Toba P27
“It was a challenging day due to the weather conditions. We went from sunshine to rain over and over during both of today’s sessions. These weren’t the best conditions to work on the bike, although we did take some steps forward. Hopefully tomorrow will be more stable, so we can actually collect some solid data in race 1 and continue with the development of the bike.”
NOTE TO EDITORS: Please note that the current website and newsletter will remain active throughout this week but will no longer be updated after the conclusion of the upcoming Dutch WorldSBK round. If you wish to continue receiving updates about MIE Racing activities, we invite you to register on the new platform:
