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HANNspree Ten Kate Honda>> Ten Kate riders refreshed and ready for Nurburgring

September 03 2009

Nieuwsbrief
 
After a six-week summer break, Hannspree Ten Kate Honda riders, Jonathan Rea and Carlos Checa, are heading to Nurburgring in Germany for this weekend’s (4-6 September) 11th round of the 2009 World Superbike championship.
 
The 5.13km circuit lies adjacent to the famous Nordschleife, part of the original track built in the 1920s in the Eifel mountains, around 70km south of Cologne. The series returned to Nurburgring last season for the first time since 1999, with Japan’s Noriyuki Haga taking a double win.
 
Jonathan Rea has enjoyed an impressive debut season in World Superbikes after finishing as runner-up in last year’s World Supersport championship. The 22-year-old from Northern Ireland, took his first win at Misano in June and has climbed the podium on three other occasions, the most recent being last time out at Brno in the Czech Republic.
 
Rea’s team-mate, Carlos Checa, was also on the podium at Brno and currently lies in eighth place in the series. The Spaniard also took a well-earned second place at Miller Motorsports Park in the US and finished fifth in both of last season’s Nurburgring outings.
 
Jonathan Rea – championship position 4th, 206 points
 
After Brno I had a little holiday and since then I’ve been fully back into training, doing a load of motocross and watching my brother Richard racing. I’ve also got a new puppy, which is taking up quite a lot of my time. The Ten Kate Honda package in Brno felt really good, so we’ll just concentrate on fine tuning it for Nurburgring when we go out on Friday after this long break. The guys back in the workshop never stand still though, and I know the data boys have been looking closely at the electronics package - so there’ll be some new things to try for sure. Although the result in Supersport last year wasn’t so good, I really enjoyed riding at Nurburgring – it’s got a bit of everything, including a couple of those first gear corners that I don’t like so much! I’ve had one race win this year and, although it wasn’t gifted and I rode well to earn it, it’s not enough. There have been three guys on it all season and I want to be in that group for the rest of the year and finish each race on the podium. I’m really motivated to make that next step now and I’ll try to start on that this weekend.
 
Carlos Checa – championship position 8th, 145 points
 
I’ve had a good few weeks, cycling and trekking in the Pyrenees and just relaxing. But I’m really looking forward to getting back on the bike and continuing the progress that we found possible at Brno. I like Nurburgring very much – it’s one of my favourite circuits – but we struggled to find the right grip levels last year. This year, with the new Ohlins suspension, you could say we are starting again from zero, but actually the faster parts at Nurburgring are not so different from Brno and the bike felt really good there. The chatter from earlier in the season is no longer there and I am feeling confident after the results in Brno. I know the usual guys will be strong, but we’ll just work hard and concentrate on our own set up to get everything right for the race.
 
Ronald ten Kate – team manager
 
It was a very hectic season up to the end of July with a lot of new things to develop and, of course, the major move of changing our suspension half way through. So you could say that this holiday has been very well-deserved by the riders and the crew. However, we haven’t stopped thinking about the improvements we can make to the bike and we’ve been working on it again these past two weeks. We want to maintain the progress that we showed before the summer break so that we can finish the rest of the season on high note.

HANNspree Ten Kate Honda is sponsored by Hotbodies Racing and uses our windscreens and bodywork on all of their bikes. Hotbodies Racing specializes in manufacturing high-performance parts for high-performance sportbikes, and is the North American distribution of KR Tuned performance parts. Hotbodies Racing is the market leader in Undertails, Huggers, Windscreens, Flush-Mount Signals, Megaphone Exhausts and full-race Bodywork. Hotbodies Racing supports the sport with sponsorship around the world and encourages dealer and distributor inquiries. For more information visit: www.HOTBODIESRACING.com.