Competing in the fifth WorldSSP championship round at Autodrom Most this weekend, Kaito Toba and Syarifuddin Azman completed a short warm-up on Saturday morning, which, unlike Friday’s rather complicated sessions, ran in the dry. This allowed both PETRONAS MIE Racing Honda riders to set quicker times with their CBR600RR bikes, well within the qualifying threshold.

A couple of hours later the WorldSSP riders lined up for the first of the weekend’s two 19-lap races. Having set a valid time in this morning’s warm-up, something the riders were unable to do yesterday in the wet, Toba and Azman lined up in twentieth and thirty-second position respectively on the grid (the positions in which they completed yesterday’s Superpole). The race got underway in dry albeit cloudy conditions, with both Toba and Azman able to make a good start when the lights went out. Japanese rider Kaito unfortunately suffered the consequences of a crash for two other riders on lap one. Though he himself did not fall, his bike was hit by one of his rivals, which caused him to drop almost to the back of the field, leaving him with plenty of work to do. Pushing as he hard as he could to recover, Toba was back up to twenty-first by lap seven. He was able to move to the front of the group in which he found himself but the gap to the riders ahead had in the meantime stretched to seven seconds. Unable to make up any more positions, Toba crossed the line nineteenth today, his result conditioned by the collision on lap one.

Azman made up three positions very early on but then had a tough time matching the pace of the group ahead of him. Moving up the classification following a series of incidents for other riders, the Malaysian rookie was lying twenty-fifth on lap seven. Keeping his head down and avoiding mistakes, Syarifuddin was able to complete a race that brought crashes for many of his rivals, placing twenty-fourth.

Kaito Toba #27

“This morning’s warm up was fully dry and we finally had the chance to check the setup of our Honda in these conditions. There were a few issues with chattering and the feeling wasn’t great. We tried to solve this for the race, but didn’t manage to make a big step unfortunately. My start was quite good, but then two riders crashed and hit my bike on lap 1. My front brake was gone right after, but I managed to get it working again. This cost me a lot of time though, and I had to work my way back up from the back of the field. We’ve got the race data to analyze and hopefully we can make a step for tomorrow.”

Syarifuddin Azman #63

“Today’s race was really hard; it was quite windy and difficult for me to manage the race well. During the opening laps, I felt good on the bike but after only about four laps the rear grip began to drop. I did my best to manage the situation. I’m not really happy with the result, but I am pleased with the progress we’ve made with the bike over the weekend. We’ll do our best to do more tomorrow, and I’m still hopeful that it might rain.”