On track at Hungary’s new Balaton Park circuit with riders Tito Rabat and Zaqhwan Zaidi, the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team put in two productive practice sessions on Friday. With Rabat now confirmed for the rest of the 2025 season, the Spaniard is keen to maximise this opportunity. 

The first of the free practices, which ran mid-morning in warm, sunny conditions, gave the two riders a first opportunity to start adapting their CBR1000RR-R machines to the new track. Rabat went into this first session with a little prior knowledge, having completed some laps of the track with a standard bike last month, while rookie rider Zaidi used the time to begin learning another new layout. By the end of this initial phase, Rabat had recorded a series of interesting lap times, the best a 1’42.077 which was enough to put him nineteenth. Focused on better understanding the bike’s behaviour at this new track, Zaidi set a time of 1’44.431 to place twenty-third.

Free practice 2 ran in similarly bright conditions, but the session did not go to plan for Spaniard Rabat, who unfortunately crashed in the early stages. The incident conditioned the first half of the session as the bike required repair before returning to the track. Back out later in the practice, Tito continued to make good inroads, taking more than half a second off his earlier time to set a 1’41.430. This meant that he placed nineteenth overall at the end of day one.

Making gradual improvement with respect to FP1, Malaysian rider Azman set a fastest time of 1’43.519, with which he consolidated twenty-third place in the day’s combined standings. The squad will be back out on Saturday for a final free practice, followed by Superpole and SBK Race 1.

Tito Rabat #53

“Today was a good day for us. We started FP1 in a good mood and had a good strategy also heading into FP2. I had a small crash, but we were able to return to the track and complete the session in an acceptable position. We’ll try to do more tomorrow as we can see from the data that we have room to improve. I’m feeling confident; you never know in racing, but I think we can close the gap to the front guys and move up a few places on the grid. Let’s see.”

Zaqhwan Zaidi #21

“I think we made good progress between FP1 and FP2. Obviously, I needed to understand this new track, so I used the first practice to do that, making many laps to get to grips with the layout. I improved lap by lap and think I can set a good time at this track. We’ll see what we can do in qualifying tomorrow. But in general, I feel quite good and am looking forward to tomorrow when I’ll try my best to improve further.”