Honda World Superbike Team’s Michael van der Mark ended Friday’s action fourth overall securing his place in Tissot – Superpole 2. The Dutchman spent most of the session in third place before ending the session early and dropping to fourth. Though still a promising result ahead of Saturday’s qualifying, van der Mark wasn’t satisfied with the day’s result.

“Yeah we had a good start this morning, I was quite happy with the bike and how we started,” said the Honda rider. “We improved a little bit step by step and then for this afternoon my first lap was a really good lap and I was happy and after that I wanted to improve the bike more, but I couldn’t really find a good direction. At the end we went back and I found a small problem with the bike and couldn’t finish the session.”

Van der Mark finished the morning session in sixth and improved in the afternoon practice to climb two places. Conditions at the Circuito de Jerez were warm and sunny in the morning but by the afterrnoon temperatures rose and the track saw the less grip with most of the field setting their best laps early on in FP2.

“I think the problem was during the session (FP2) the lap times weren’t really how we wanted them to be but I think for the moment we have to be happy because I think we can be really consistent," van der Mark added. "Everyone’s struggling with tyres, not just us so I’m looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully we can find a couple of tenths. The thing is the first laps we had a lot of grip and then the grip dropped a lot and its difficult to control if you have to do another twenty laps so it will be a big challenge but it’s the same for everyone.”

Michael van der Mark will be looking for extra grip in tomorrow’s Tissot-Superpole 2 qualifying session as he looks to lock out a spot on the front row of the grid at 10:55 am local time (GMT+2).