WorldSSP – Mackenzie and Norrodin fight hard in SSP race 1 at Most

The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team is competing in round eight of the Supersport World Championship at the Autodrom Most this weekend. In the first of the weekend’s races, which ran today in dry, sunny conditions, riders Tarran Mackenzie and Adam Norrodin placed seventeenth and twenty-first respectively.

Mackenzie and Norrodin first tackled the Superpole qualifying session, a brief 15-minute phase that ran mid-morning in dry but cloudy conditions. British rider Tarran did well to complete two fast laps, the best of which in 1’36.460. This time was enough to see him position twenty-second at the end of the session, for a place on the eighth row of the grid for the afternoon’s first race. Norrodin concluded the qualifying phase in twenty-ninth place with a time of 1’37.539, which translated into a tenth row start for the race.

At 3.15pm local time and in dry conditions, the lights went out on the first of the weekend’s two 19-lap Supersport races, but it was red flagged just a few corners in following a crash for another rider. The race was restarted a few minutes later but reduced to a distance of just 12 laps. From twenty-first on the grid, Mackenzie was lying twenty-third through the early stages, with team-mate Norrodin half a second behind him in twenty-sixth. Tarran soon gained three positions, battling hard with his closest rivals to break into the top twenty. By the mid-race point, the Brit was lying eighteenth and continued to up his pace, catching and passing the rider in seventeenth place on the penultimate lap. The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda rider held his position through the final corners to finish the race in final seventeenth position.

Moving into twenty-fourth early on in the race, team-mate Norrodin gradually got into a rhythm that saw him lapping faster than some of the riders in the group ahead of him. The Malaysian’s final lap was in fact his quickest, his pace allowing him to gain a couple of positions in the latter stages of the race and complete today’s race in twenty-first position.

The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team will be back on track tomorrow for the second and final Supersport race of the weekend.

Tarran Mackenzie P17

“A positive race today. We put together a good qualifying session too and improved the setting for the race so overall a good step forward. We’re still lacking in some key areas but definitely a more positive race, perhaps the best we’ve had in Europe, so that’s a good sign. We need to keep improving though, something we’ll attempt to do already tomorrow with the aim of getting closer to the points zone.”

Adam Norrodin P21

“I was quite happy with the step we made in today’s race. We struggled a little to find the best setup during the practices but we found something that worked better in the race and this allowed me to improve on my lap times. I was quicker in the race than in qualifying in fact, so that’s a good step, also with a view to tomorrow’s race. We have room to improve of course, and will try something in morning warm-up to see if we can do more in race 2.”

Full results *Courtesy of WorldSBK.com