Saturday began with a final free practice, which played out in the rain in contrast to Friday’s dry practices. The less favourable conditions nevertheless afforded the team an opportunity to try out their wet bike setting. At 11am the SBK riders returned to the track for Superpole, which ran in full wet conditions. Mackenzie, a rider who is generally comfortable in these tricky conditions, soon evaluated the conditions and adapted his riding to suit. Gaining confidence with each lap he completed, the Brit made his best lap in the final minute, setting a 1’54.887 which was enough to see him qualify in eleventh position for the afternoon’s 21-lap race. New to the Magny-Cours track, Lopes did his best in the challenging conditions, completing seven laps in all, the best of which in 2’01.765, a time he set in the final seconds. 

The first of the weekend’s races ran in the dry at 2pm CET although the track surface was still damp in places. From row four of the grid, Mackenzie was lying twelfth by the end of lap one. Rain began to fall on lap two and quickly became heavy, meaning that the entire field came into the pits to switch tyres. Tarran pitted on lap four, returning to the track in fourteenth place. By lap nine he was up into eleventh, just behind fellow Honda rider Lecuona, and looking strong. However a crash on lap eleven unfortunately put a premature end to what was looking to be a very positive race for the Brit. Lopes did what he could to stick with his closest rivals as his race began from row eight, but the Portuguese rider ran onto a wet patch of asphalt and crashed on lap two just as the rain began to fall. 

Tarran Mackenzie 

A little frustrated obviously. I felt quite good in the first part of the race in mixed conditions, and I started to make up a few positions on the slicks when the rain came on. I feel like I perhaps pitted one lap too late to switch tyres. Anyway, I headed back out on the rain tyres but didn’t feel as comfortable as I had earlier today in qualifying. I was in a group and visibility was quite bad, so I was struggling a little with that. Then at one point I ran wide at turn 6 which meant I was a bit tight into turn 7 and the rear just came round on me. It was disappointing to end the race like that, as it would have been great to come back and immediately score some points. At least I’m ok physically though, and we’ll try again tomorrow. It looks dry for Sunday so we’ll do our best to improve the feeling and I’ll do what I can to feel a bit more comfortable after so much time off the bike.

Ivo Lopes 

Today was really difficult considering the conditions. Like most riders, I chose not to ride in FP3 as it was neither full wet nor full dry. Superpole gave me a first opportunity to ride this bike in the rain. I don’t want to make excuses, but I was lacking some understanding about the bike and tyre behaviour in these conditions. At least we collected some data, but I knew Race 1 would be tough. It started in the dry, but parts of the track were damp, and I just touched a wet patch and went down early on. A disappointing outcome for me and the team but we have another chance tomorrow in the Superpole race and Race 2, so we’ll keep working hard to score the best possible result.