The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team is on track at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve in Portugal for round seven of the 2024 Superbike World Championship. 

After a final free practice, in which riders Adam Norrodin and Ivo Lopes both found a little more to set their best respective times of the weekend so far, the team turned its attention to the Superpole qualifying session. In hot and humid conditions, the SBK field had just 15 minutes in which to secure the best possible grid position for race 1. A best of 1’42.769 for Adam saw him qualify twenty-first for the day’s 20-lap race, while team-mate Ivo, unused to the frenetic Superpole format, set a 1’43.181 to place twenty-second. 

In a change to the usual weekend schedule, SBK Race 1 ran at 6pm local time (CET-1). In very hot conditions, Norrodin was lying twenty-first through the opening laps, just ahead of Lopes, twenty-second. The team-mates exchanged places on lap five, but the gap that had opened up in front of them in the meantime made it impossible for them to catch the group ahead. Gaining a position apiece on lap seven, the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team crossed the line in P19 with Lopes and in P20 with Norrodin. 

Ivo Lopes 

“My feeling today was good. The position on the grid was not so important for me, because I knew that it would be difficult to exploit the qualifying tyre in Superpole, but in FP3, with used tyres, I was able to better understand the bike and improve on my times with respect to the previous practices. As for Race 1, I’m very happy with how it went. I want to find another half second a lap over the first laps and that wasn’t possible today, but at least I understand why. I was pleased with the second half of the race anyway, as my fastest lap time came on lap nineteen so that bodes well. I’m continuing to improve session by session, and I can only be pleased with that. The important thing tomorrow is to try and find better pace through the initial stages so that I don’t lose too much early on, because if we can do that I’ll be in a better position later in the race, when I’m generally stronger.” 

Adam Norrodin 

“A positive day overall. In qualifying I’m normally more than three seconds from the front but we took a step compared to previous weekends, the bike feeling good and my feeling with the bike improving as a result. The start of the race wasn’t too bad, and my times were in line with my performance in qualifying. The pace was OK until a few laps from the end actually, when I started to feel a little unwell. It was strange, but it affected the last part of the race. Anyway, we’ll analyse the data from today and see what we can do in tomorrow’s Superpole race and race 2.”