There’s no place like Home | Ten Kate Honda – World SBK Team
- From: 'the Wire' | Published: April 20th, 2010 - 6:49 am
The Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team heads to its home circuit at Assen in Holland this weekend (23-25 April) for round four of the 2010 World Superbike championship.
The team is based just 60km south of the historic Assen circuit at the Ten Kate Motoren Honda motorcycle dealership in Nieuwleusen, where last Saturday some 7,500 visitors attended the company’s annual Pit Stop Day to look around the showroom and workshops and meet the team’s riders.
The Hannspree duo remained in Holland after completing a two-day test last week at a revised Assen circuit, now slightly reduced in length to 4.542km after an alteration to the right-hander at the end of the back straight.
Jonathan Rea, currently fifth in the WSBK points standings, used the Assen test to work on improving grip from his Honda CBR1000RR under acceleration out of corners, while his German team-mate, Max Neukirchner, who celebrates his 27th birthday today, concentrated on an overall set up for the Assen races next Sunday.
Jonathan Rea
It’s been great hanging out here for the last week and to meet all the Ten Kate fans again at the Pit Stop Day – I’m feeling half Dutch already! We had a great test at Assen last week to work on making a good bike even better. The revised corner is fast but I really like the track anyway and I’ve gone OK here in the last couple of years. We completely re-evaluated the balance of the bike last week and tried shifting a lot of weight to the rear, which helped in delivering grip as it’s accelerating out of corners. It’s obviously difficult to know how it’ll transfer to other circuits but it worked OK at Assen and, without getting ahead of ourselves, I found it quite easy to adapt my riding style to suit the change. It’s hard to judge it properly until our rivals take to the track on Friday but it all looked quite positive when we overlaid the data from last year with other parts of the circuit.
Max Neukirchner
Saturday’s Pit Stop Day at the Ten Kate workshop was amazing – a very big event! Afterwards I went back to Berlin to celebrate my birthday with friends and family. It was really important to test at Assen after we had another difficult weekend in Valencia. It’s been a tough start to the season so we’ve needed as much track time as possible to find out what’s going wrong. The level of competition in Superbike is much higher now so it’s easy to be a long way down even if the lap times are not so far behind. We were able to make some progress during the test and we will try to continue the work when we get back on the track on Friday. I like Assen a lot, although I preferred it before they made the big changes a few years ago. I got on the podium in 2008 and was going OK there last year. I know how hard ev eryone is working so I’ll try my best to get some better results for the team this weekend.
Ronald ten Kate – team manager
Of course, last week’s test has been of benefit to us but it’s not any kind of advantage that we can count on, so we’ll have to work just as hard this weekend as we would at any other race. On Jonathan’s side of the garage we found quite a different set-up which we will develop further during the race weekend. With Max we made further progress during the test and I believe we found a potential answer to the problems we’ve been having.
Kenan Sofuoglu has declared himself ‘ready to win’ this weekend’s fourth round World Supersport championship race at Assen in the Netherlands.
Representing his Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team’s home race, the Turkish rider is confident of a strong performance at the slightly revised 4.542km Assen circuit in the north of the country after completing a two-day test last week.
Sofuoglu, 25, has finished on the podium in all three 2010 races thus far, winning round two at Portimao in Portugal. The Turkish rider currently sits just four points behind series leader Joan Lascorz.
His 2010 Hannspree Ten Kate Honda team-mate, Michele Pirro, has enjoyed a varied start to the season, mixing bad luck in the opening race at Phillip Island in Australia with his first World Supersport podium at Portimao.
The 23-year-old Italian fought his way back to 11th after an early race crash in the last round at Valencia, and is determined to make amends at his team’s home race this weekend.
Kenan Sofuoglu
I am very happy after the test at Assen last week, and it was fantastic to see so many people at the team’s Pit Stop Day last Saturday. We had some difficult problems during the race at Assen last year and I was only able to finish fifth. Now it’s like riding a completely new CBR600RR. I like the Assen circuit very much – OK, they changed the layout a little bit and they said that we might go 1.5s faster. In fact, I think we were something like three seconds faster! The bike still has even more potential to improve as well and we found out a lot about tyre wear later in the race. I was still able to do fast laps at the end of a long run. So, I think you can say that I am not just ready to race at Assen, I’m ready to win!
Michele Pirro
The test last week was very good for me and I hope that the result of this will be a better race than in Valencia, which was a big disappointment. It was OK for me to work with the team in a very relaxed way to find a better setting and a better feeling from the bike. We found some new solutions and I look forward to using these at the weekend. I like the Assen circuit very much and the new chicane is very fast, which is OK for me. After the test, it was good to meet many fans of the team at the workshop – it was a good reminder that I am a part of such a big team!
Ronald ten Kate – team manager
We had a very good two-day test at the circuit, when Michele was working mainly on his race set-up, especially for the latter stages to get more of a feel from worn tyres. With Kenan we tested quite a few chassis and electronics ideas back-to-back to further improve his CBR machine. Both riders did long runs which were quite OK so we head to our home race with some confidence.
