A demanding SSP qualifying for Toba and Pawi at Misano
For the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team, day one of the World Supersport action at the Misano World Circuit brought its challenges, with Toba qualifying twenty-fifth and Pawi thirty-first for Saturday’s Race 1.
Round four of the 2024 Supersport World Championship is in play at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in Italy. The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team and riders Kaito Toba and Khairul Idham Pawi were out mid-morning for a free practice, which ran in hot, dry conditions. The pair made a little progress throughout the session, although both had hoped for more in light of the recent test sessions that the team completed at Cremona. Toba placed twenty-ninth at the session’s end with a time of 1’40.417, followed directly by Pawi, thirtieth with a 1’40.745.
Later in the afternoon, it was time for the 40-minute Superpole qualifying phase. Both Pawi and Toba immediately made a significant dent on their FP1 times, particularly the Japanese rider who shaved off well over a second to set a best of 1’39.048. With this result, Kaito qualified for the weekend’s first race in twenty-fifth position, followed by team-mate Pawi, thirty-first with a fastest time of 1’40.376.
Kaito Toba WorldSSP Rider #27
"It was a busy Friday for us. Together with Honda, we’ve been working to improve the performance of the CBR. In the free practice, we focused on gathering as much data as possible with the updates on the bike, while in the Superpole we used most of the session to fine tune the setup. In the last few minutes, I made a time attack and came close to 1’38, but just missed out. I am thankful for all the hard work the team and Honda are doing; we just need to keep working in this direction"
Khairul Idham Pawi WorldSSP Rider #89
"This morning, I felt that the bike was squatting too much in the changes of direction, so we made a change for Superpole to make it less soft. I felt a little better but there's still not enough support in the changes of direction and too much movement at the rear. With only one practice it's not easy to find the solutions right away, which meant that qualifying was quite difficult. We will try to use tomorrow's warmup to find a way to take another step so that we can do our best in the first race"
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