Michael Van Der Mark’s whopping turn 13 highside in today’s opening WorldSBK race was caused by a hole in the tyres, Pirelli have confirmed.

The Pata Yamaha man was holding off reigning world champ Jonathan Rea for the win but with seven laps left to run, Van Der Mark was pinged out of his seat by a very strange crash.

“Just a few hours after the race, the elements we have available are obviously not enough to allow us to provide a structured and complete explanation of what happened to Michael Van Der Mark’s rear tyre. On-site, the only thing we can do, and we have done it, is an analysis with the naked eye,” said Pirelli boss Georgio Barbier.

“From this analysis, which we shared with Yamaha, we found that there is a hole on the left side of the tyre. This is completely different damage from what was found on Jonathan Rea’s tyre, with it being understood that these are also two different solutions.

“It is obviously of primary interest to us to understand what caused this damage to the tyre, so over the coming hours and days we will be conducting the appropriate in depth investigations for this case in our laboratories.”