The PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda Team is on track at Estoril Circuit in Portugal for the penultimate round of the 2024 Supersport World Championship, with riders Kaito Toba and Khairul Idham Pawi joined by wildcard Azroy Hakeem this weekend. 

With limited previous knowledge of the Portuguese circuit, the riders’ plan for Friday morning’s practice was to get to grips with the technical layout, something that was made more complicated by the fact the WorldSSP field had to deal with very challenging, wet conditions. The session was already red flagged in the first few minutes after several riders were involved in crashes. Once the practice resumed, the PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda trio made rapid progress, particularly Pawi, who positioned in the top three for a good part of the session. The 40-minute session complete, the Malaysian was lying twelfth thanks to a time of 1’58.802. Team-mate Toba had a tougher time in the wet and although he gradually improved on his references lap by lap, his best time, a 2’00.516, saw him place twenty-third. Unfortunately for Hakeem, a crash with a little over 20 minutes to go meant that he had to make a quick pit stop. His team worked rapidly to ensure that his bike was in working order, which allowed him to rejoin the session in the final stages. Able to improve slightly on his earlier time, a reference of 1’59.440 meant that the Malaysian wildcard positioned an encouraging twentieth in his very first session at the Estoril Circuit. 

Although rain continued to fall on and off throughout the day, the track was almost dry as the afternoon’s Superpole got underway. With just forty minutes in which to understand the changed conditions and secure the best possible qualifying position, Toba, Pawi and Hakeem got straight to work. Fifteen minutes in, the riders unfortunately found themselves back in pouring rain, with the entire field returning to the garage to await better conditions. Though the rain eased, the resulting wet asphalt meant that the SSP field had no chance to improve on times set earlier in the session. Having not yet set a sufficiently fast time during the initial dry stages of the Superpole, this unfortunately meant that Hakeem qualified twenty-sixth with a 1.45’890 and Toba twenty-seventh with a time of 1’46.337. With a best time of 1’52.323, Pawi was among a group of riders whose lap times were not within the 105% qualifying cutoff. However, they will all still start in tomorrow's race, with Pawi lining up in 28th place on the grid.

Azroy Hakeem P26

“In the wet practice, I was feeling good although we still need to find something more with the setup so that I can be a bit more comfortable. In Superpole, it was a difficult situation with the weather of course. It’s my first experience of Estoril too, so we just need to keep working and find a good dry setup tomorrow, if conditions allow.” 

 Kaito Toba P27

“In today’s free practice we tried out a couple of ideas for the setting in the wet. With less water on track during the second half of the session, the times began to improve, but we were still far from finding the best set up solution. In the Superpole the track was dry early on. Although we went out on slick tyres right away, there wasn’t much of a chance to work on our lap time because it soon started to rain again, which meant it was game over. It’ll be a tricky race tomorrow, but we don’t give up and we’ll do our best to fight back.” 

Khairul Idham Pawi 

“I felt good in the wet conditions this morning. Unfortunately we then made the wrong decision in Superpole though, going out with rain tyres at the start only to find the track was not wet enough. I then came in to switch tyres but in the meantime it came on to rain, which meant we lost the chance to set a fast lap time. So a difficult day and I hope tomorrow goes better.”