The third-round of the World Superbike championship this weekend has been a challenging outing for Michael van der Mark and Sylvain Guintoli at Aragon, Spain.

Over the weekend the team strived to improve and find the optimum setting for the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP around the 5.077km circuit.

In the first of two 18-lap races, van der Mark was forced to retire due to a small technical problem on the tenth lap. The second race saw the SBK rookie make a gallant attack moving up from his starting grid position in 11th to sixth place, but on the last lap had to settle with eighth.

Meanwhile van der Mark’s teammate Sylvain Guintoli finished race one within the top-ten taking ninth place after making his way forward from his qualifying position in 14th. During the second installment he had made his way up to tenth but crashed out of the running on the sixth lap after loosing the front.

The team will now take and analyse all the data collected from each session this weekend in preparation for its home race at Assen, the Netherlands next weekend 17-19 April.