The sixth Supersport World Championship weekend is now underway at Donington Park in the UK, where the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team is competing with riders Khairul Idham Pawi and Kaito Toba. 

Despite heavy rain overnight, the track had essentially dried in time for the WorldSSP free practice, which ran according to schedule on Friday morning. With no previous track knowledge to speak of, Pawi and Toba did their best to get to grips with the layout and setup their CBR600RR bikes accordingly. It is important to exploit this first session, in that it is the only practice Supersport riders have in preparation for the afternoon’s Superpole. Having made good progress throughout the 40 minutes available to them, the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda duo place twenty-seventh and thirty-first respectively as practice came to an end, thanks to a best of 1’32.203 for Toba and a 1’32.485 for Pawi. 

The WorldSSP field was back out later in the day, on a dry track, for the all-important Superpole. Japanese rider Toba quickly made a step forward with respect to FP1, continuing to improve on his times throughout. Shaving off close to two seconds, Kaito set a best of 1’30.438, which saw him lying twenty-first with just minutes to go. Unfortunately, an incident in the final stages saw another rider collide with Toba through turn 9, but luckily neither rider sustained serious injury. Team-mate Pawi had more difficulty this afternoon, struggling to find the right feeling around this new circuit and ultimately setting a time of 1’31.795 to qualify on the eleventh row of the grid, in thirty-first position.