Round 8 – Riviera di Rimini
Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, Italy
A third-place finish was the result of Sunday’s eighth-round World Supersport race for Patrick ‘PJ’ Jacobsen, who put together a fighting performance in front of the Italian crowd at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’. The race was won by Kenan Sofuoglu ahead of pole-sitter Federico Caricasulo (Bardahl Evan Bros. Honda Racing).
The young American rider had a good launch from third place on the grid and maintained his position into turn one. The following lap, Jacobsen made a successful move on Sofuoglu at the super-fast Turn 11, while on lap seven he overtook Caricasulo to move into the lead.
Jacobsen held in front until the penultimate lap, when he began experiencing a loss of grip that hindered his pace and then he was unable to defend his position. He was eventually overtaken by race winner Sofuoglu on the penultimate lap and then by Caricasulo before the chequered flag to round out the podium of today’s race, the last before the long summer break for World Supersport.
PJ will return to the track before mid September, though, as he will take part in this year’s edition of the Suzuka 8 Hours race, which takes place at the end of July.
Patrick Jacobsen 2 - 3rd
At the beginning, I felt I was a bit more comfortable on the bike than Caricasulo looked and that is why I decided to take the lead. The bike felt good and I just tried to settle into my own rhythm as soon when I realised that I couldn’t open a gap. With four laps to go I thought that, if I kept my own pace, I would have been able to stay ahead but unfortunately the other two were a bit quicker, and in the end I hadn’t much grip left. I want to thank the team for their work: we were not fully 100% today and we knew it, but we gave our very best and a podium is always a good result. Now it’s time for me to prepare for Suzuka and then enjoy a summer break.
Pieter Breddels - Technical Manager
After the cold warm up, it was not easy to decide what to use in terms of tyres, because the temperatures were much lower than yesterday and we didn’t know how much warmer it would been for the race. In the end we went for the SC1 at the front and the SC0 at the rear. PJ’s start was great and soon enough he was leading the race. Unfortunately, towards the end he made a small mistake while downshifting but it was because he had run out of grip grip. We’re happy with today’s podium, we made good points and we were in contention the whole time. We made up some ground to second place in the standings, which is now our goal as the leader is too far away. There’s a long break now for Supersport but we will work hard to make sure we are at 100% for the next race, while we still need to figure out why we keep struggling a bit in some areas.
