Steven Odendaal Aragon 1 race report

Valuable points for Steven Odendaal after a challenging weekend in MotorLand Aragón

Three weeks after the Portuguese round of the 2020 WorldSupersport Championship, where Steven Odendaal and his team EAB Ten Kate Racing only just missed out on a podium finish with a 4th position in the second race, the world championship paddock was back in action last weekend for round one of the MotorLand Aragón doubleheader. After a challenging weekend, the young South African is already looking forward to this coming weekend to try out some changes to the set-up of his Yamaha Y6 in order to find improvements for the upcoming two races in MotorLand.

Steven Odendaal (Race 1 – 6th, Race 2 – 8th): “Overall the weekend was not what we had expected but we found some important areas where we can improve this weekend. I qualified eighth on Saturday but was given a penalty of 6 positions for race 1 due to being too slow on the out lap of the Superpole session. I felt comfortable to push in the first race and managed to fight my way through the field from 14th on the grid to claim a 6th position at the end. Unfortunately, I used up my tyre at the beginning when I was fighting my way through the field but we were doing the same lap times as the riders who finished 2nd and 3rd which was encouraging. The second race was more difficult and we finished 8th after a great battle with Corentin Perolari, who finished 0.01 seconds ahead of me in the end. We realised after the race that we were definitely using the wrong gearing throughout the whole weekend and we need to work on this because I believe it is compromising my drive on the exit of corners. We will try this first thing on Friday morning as well as a slightly different geometry set-up. I think that if these changes work we can fight for the podium and will definitely be more competitive. I would like to say thanks to my team for all their hard work and effort, hopefully, we will come back stronger this weekend.”