The back-to-back events of Aragón and Teruel, held at the same venue, follow a successful restart to Pata Yamaha’s championship campaign, which saw at least one Yamaha R1 on the WorldSBK podium in each race at Jerez and Portimão.
In a recent two-day test to prepare for the upcoming races, Pata Yamaha riders Michael van der Mark and Toprak Razgatlıoğlu completed a combined total of 254 laps with a special focus on rear grip in hot conditions similar to those anticipated this weekend.
With clear aims to fight for the podium, both Van der Mark and Razgatlıoğlu will have their work cut out for them. At 5.077 km, Aragón is the longest circuit of the WorldSBK calendar in 2020 featuring a mixture of sweeping corners, tighter slow turns and a back straight more than a kilometre long.
Van der Mark has ridden to a top-five position aboard his R1 on no less than four occasions here, in 2017 and 2018. It will, of course, be Razgatlıoğlu’s first time on the Aragón grid in Yamaha blue, but he arrives in fine form and with four days of valuable track time at the circuit from both the recent and winter tests.
The Pata Yamaha team will have their first chance to size up the competition on Friday morning with Free Practice 1 and 2 at 10:30 and 15:00 local time (GMT+1), before the points-scoring race action kicks off on Saturday.
