Two weeks after the WorldSBK opening round at Phillip Island in Australia, the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team has been back in action at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portugal, participating in an important two-day test on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 March with Tarran Mackenzie and rookie Zaqhwan Zaidi.

Mackenzie and particularly rookie Zaidi were keen to make the most of this valuable track time ahead of the upcoming Portuguese championship round, but unfortunately the test was affected by rain, with little to no track action on Friday morning or Saturday afternoon. The two PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda riders nevertheless did their best to exploit the dry track time on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. On Mackenzie’s side of the garage, the aim was to iron out a few issues that arose during the opening championship round in Australia in preparation for the second championship round. Friday’s work revolved around work on the suspension and electronics, before attention shifted to chassis setup work on Saturday. Completing 74 laps in all over the two days, the British rider and his technicians are pleased with the progress made, despite the weather interruptions. 

Meanwhile, tasked with getting to grips with another track he has never seen before, Malaysian rider Zaidi continued his apprenticeship, working hard to build confidence with the CBR1000RR-R, a bike he rode for the very first time in Australia. Able to put in a total of 78 laps, Zaidi’s first proper test session has been extremely useful, allowing the Malaysian to gain a better understanding of his machine, the Pirelli tyres and the team’s work method.

Next up for the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team is the second round of the 2025 Superbike World Championship, which will be staged at the same Portuguese track over the weekend of 28-30 March.

Tarran Mackenzie #95

“Yesterday I felt a bit better in myself, riding wise, using the base setting from Phillip Island, and we already made a bit of progress by the end of the day, despite wet weather in the morning. Today we’ve not done so many laps; we had big plans as we began this morning, but a few changes took longer than expected and then, once we were ready to go out, it started raining! It came on to rain again after lunch, a little bit annoying because we had quite a lot we wanted to do this afternoon to be heading in the right direction for the race. It finally dried up so that we could use the final 50 minutes and that was good, we improved on our times and the feeling was a bit better with the changes we’d made; we just ran out of time at the end to be able to use a Q tyre. I feel good in myself anyway, which is the main thing, having not felt so good in Australia, so that’s positive and I think we’ve found a better direction for the races here in a couple of weeks.”

Zaqhwan Zaidi #21

“My first time here at Portimão and it’s not easy, another new challenge for me. But I’m quite happy with what we’ve done here, we’ve seen progress. I didn’t have the confidence with the bike at Phillip Island; everything was new and I hadn’t been able to test either. So now I’m understanding more, about the bike of course and also how to work with my crew chief. For sure we still need to improve some points but I believe I can be better. Like I said, everything is new for me, even the tyres, and it’s not just the Portimão track I’ve never seen, as almost all the circuits will be new – I’ve only been to Aragón and Jerez before. It’ll take time to get where we want to be, but I’ll keep working as hard as I can.”