Guintoli pleased with results after difficult Phillip Island

Reigning World Superbike champion Sylvain Guintoli has left the first round of the 2015 season content with his fifth and seventh at Phillip Island after a difficult opening to his first season as a world champion.

The Frenchman crashed heavily at a Jerez test last month after an electrical problem with his Pata Honda. Damaging his shoulder and neck in the incident, he was left in a battle for fitness in the days leading up to the season opener in Australia.

“To be honest, I’ve never felt so physically drained after two races. I think the injury from Jerez must have somehow added to the dehydration because I felt really ill during both the races. I’ll focus on recovering as much as possible before the next races now. “

“I tried everything I could and we did both races with very different set-ups, although the results were much the same. But at least we’ve got some good data that we can work on now. After missing so much winter testing, I’ve really been treating this weekend as another live test session because I’m still not quite yet clicking with the bike. We’ll just keep working though and come back strong in Thailand.”

With Guintoli missing valuable testing time thanks to the crash, combined with poor weather for much of the pre-season, the team has been left chasing setup time, as team technical co-ordinator Pieter Breddels reiterated.

“We didn’t have an easy first weekend with Sylvain but we kept changing the CBR to give him more feeling for the race and he finished seventh in race one. For race two we changed the bike again and he finished fifth. He’s fifth in the points and considering everything that’s not too bad. We’ll study everything to consider the best way forward but I’m confident that we’ll be stronger in Thailand.”