On the legendary Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli Covena started his 7th race of his debut World Supersport season. After a difficult weekend in Sepang the dutchmen came back strong to finish 18th.
For the practice sessions on Friday the Intermoto Ponyexpres Kawasaki rider made some changes in the bike to improve handeling and clutch feeling. As this was a big step, Covena and the team decided to take it easy and focus on getting comfortable with the new adjustments to the bike.
Saturday, the day of qualifying, brought some high and lows. In Free Practice 3 Covena clearly felt comfortable with the new changes on the bike as he posted his fastest time of the weekend on only his second lap. The qualifying in comparison with FP3 didn't go as easy and together with a lot of traffic on track the Kawasaki rider qualified on 24th spot.
After a good warm-up session Covena was ready to race and fight for World Championship points. When the lights dropped Covena immediately overtook a couple of riders and was riding in 22th place. As we have seen before the lap times got better and better throughout the race. This meant he got up to 18th place halfway the race. With a 5 second gap to the riders duo who was fighting for 16th place it seemed to far to catch. Nonetheless Covena kept his head down and pulled out laptimes that was similar to the riders in the top 10 and closed the gap to 0.5 of a second on the finish line.
Tony Covena
"We rode a strong race this weekend at the Misano track. On friday we made a big change with the clutch to improve my feeling on braking and midcorner. This worked out positive but I still needed some time to get used to it as it was a big step. In the race I was very strong and my laptimes were super constant which is good. I was able to match the speed from the guys in the top 10 what gives me hope for the next round in Portimao."
With a short break the World Supersport series will be hosted at the Portimao in Portugal on the 6th of July.
TC9
For the practice sessions on Friday the Intermoto Ponyexpres Kawasaki rider made some changes in the bike to improve handeling and clutch feeling. As this was a big step, Covena and the team decided to take it easy and focus on getting comfortable with the new adjustments to the bike.
Saturday, the day of qualifying, brought some high and lows. In Free Practice 3 Covena clearly felt comfortable with the new changes on the bike as he posted his fastest time of the weekend on only his second lap. The qualifying in comparison with FP3 didn't go as easy and together with a lot of traffic on track the Kawasaki rider qualified on 24th spot.
After a good warm-up session Covena was ready to race and fight for World Championship points. When the lights dropped Covena immediately overtook a couple of riders and was riding in 22th place. As we have seen before the lap times got better and better throughout the race. This meant he got up to 18th place halfway the race. With a 5 second gap to the riders duo who was fighting for 16th place it seemed to far to catch. Nonetheless Covena kept his head down and pulled out laptimes that was similar to the riders in the top 10 and closed the gap to 0.5 of a second on the finish line.
Tony Covena
"We rode a strong race this weekend at the Misano track. On friday we made a big change with the clutch to improve my feeling on braking and midcorner. This worked out positive but I still needed some time to get used to it as it was a big step. In the race I was very strong and my laptimes were super constant which is good. I was able to match the speed from the guys in the top 10 what gives me hope for the next round in Portimao."
With a short break the World Supersport series will be hosted at the Portimao in Portugal on the 6th of July.
TC9
