Fifth row starts for both of team Pedercini’s riders today at Monza for the fourth round of the Superbike World Championship. Due to yesterday’s difficult qualifying session, Rolfo started from eighteenth position and teammate Aitchison from twentieth. Roberto Rolfo hopes of a good result went up in smoke this morning after just a few laps of the race one when the Italian rider was forced to re-enter the box because of a technical problem.
After a good start Mark Aitchison started to suffer for some rear grip problems and in the last lap he ran out fuel. Fortunately he was able to finish the race in seventeenth position. In race two Rolfo and Aitchison reached the points zone, obtaining respectively the thirteenth and the fourteenth places.
Roberto Rolfo
“ In the first race I was forced to retire because I was suffering from some set up problems and I was not able to ride my bike effectively, especially through the chicane and so I preferred to stop my race. For race two my technicians changed the setting and I soon found a better feeling with the bike. The rear grip was not sufficient enough to allow me to push and improve my race pace but near to the end of the race I was able to improve my lap times reaching the thirteenth position. I’m confident for the next races because the bike’s performance improved here in Monza and this is a difficult track for the Kawasaki which means that at the other circuits we can obtain better results”.
Mark Aitchison
“Today I have had a very difficult day in Monza. Both our races started well and I was hoping to move forward with the front rider, but after a few laps the grip level from the rear tyre decreased quite quickly. In the first race after our rear grip seemed to go away, I experienced some problems with the bike being nervous, causing some arm pump. I was able to manage this well enough but than on the final lap I also ran out of fuel. Luckily I was able to roll across the finish line in seventeenth position. During the second race we attempted to fix a few of our problems with grip by making some small modification to the bike. Unfortunately our situation didn’t really improve and I could not maintain a consistent lap time in the final six-eight laps. I would like to thank my team for all their hard work over the weekend and we will work hard to make the results I know we are capable of in Salt Lake City”.
Race one report and results available here, race two results available here
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