Español

Your shopping cart is empty

HANNspree Ten Kate Honda >> Rea and Neukirchner seek States success

May 29 2010

Ten Kate Racing - Nieuwsbrief

Hannspree Ten Kate Honda riders, Jonathan Rea and Max Neukirchner, have arrived in America for this weekend’s seventh round World Superbike championship event at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City in Utah. The 4.907km Miller circuit’s fast and flowing layout suits the engine and handling characteristics of the team’s Honda CBR1000RRs and the two riders are eager to get back on track on Saturday. In a break with World Superbike tradition, the race will take place on Monday, which is Memorial Day and a public holiday in the US.

Rea heads into the weekend, which marks the halfway point in the 2010 season, in third place in the series after his fourth podium finish of the year last time out at Kyalami in South Africa. The 23-year-old from Northern Ireland took fifth and third place finishes in the two 2009 races at Miller and is confident that the base setting which he and his crew have been fine tuning in rece nt rounds will stand him in good stead for this weekend’s encounters.

Max Neukirchner missed last year’s races through injury but performed strongly in the inaugural WSBK meeting at Miller in 2008, when he finished second and fourth. The 26-year-old German has struggled to find his best form so far this year and is looking to Miller to help him turn his season around.

Jonathan Rea
I’ve had a good few days acclimatising in America – staying with my manager Chuck Aksland in a town called Copperopolis, near San Francisco. It’s in Copper Valley, so you can probably imagine what they mined here. I’ve been playing some golf and watched the AMA Motocross at Hangtown last weekend. Now it’s time to get back to business at Miller which quite I’m optimistic about. We know the bike works well there and I really enjoy riding at the circuit, so we’re going with the intention of at l east two podium finishes. We lost our way a bit on the Saturday at Kyalami but still managed to grind out two decent results. We’ll keep working around the good base setting that we’ve found this year, which is the one we usually end up going back to, but I definitely need to qualify well at Miller to ensure that I get away near the front in Monday’s races.

Max Neukirchner
After the promise of Assen the races at both Monza and Kyalami were disappointing. But after South Africa we had a good meeting and the team told me not to spend too long thinking about things and that I should try to relax and refresh a little. I know the guys have got a plan together for Miller, which we will go through on Friday at the circuit and then we will try to find a good base set-up – I’ll just concentrate and work as hard as I can through the weekend. I finished second and fourth at Miller two years ago but I missed l ast year’s races. I’ll try to get up to speed again as quickly as possible, while working on the new style that focuses on corner exit and getting on the throttle as quickly as possible. I’m actually feeling really optimistic, though, and looking forward to the weekend very much.

Ronald ten Kate – team manager
The bikes went immediately to America from Kyalami so most of the guys have had some time off over the last week. We’ve had a good look at all the data from Kyalami, however, and we know that Miller has been good for us over the last couple of years. In fact, America has been pretty good generally, because we had quite some success at Laguna Seca before. Of course, results from the past don’t mean much for this weekend, but we’re certainly confident that Jonathan can be fighting up at the front again. We also have a plan of attack to get Max back on the rails and will start him wi th two clear settings. Once we’ve found that base, he’ll hopefully be no more than a couple of clicks away. But at least Miller’s grippy surface and characteristics are very different to the bumps of Kyalami.

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.