#Pata #Honda’s Leon Haslam will start tomorrow’s two tenth-round World Superbike championship races at Jerez in Spain from the third row of the grid after setting the eighth-fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole sessions.
Haslam, 31, finished this morning’s third free practice session in 11th place and therefore took part in the opening Superpole, progressing to Superpole 2 by setting the second-fastest time.
However, the British rider was pleased to have the opportunity to try an additional qualifying tyre which set him up for Superpole 2 and allowed him to improve his previous lap time by almost a second.
In 30˚C of Spanish heat this afternoon and with track temperatures again over 50˚C, Haslam’s Pata Honda team-mate Jonathan Rea and his crew struggled to find an optimum setting for the 4.423km Jerez circuit. British rider Rea, 27, will consequently start from the fourth row after setting the 10th fastest time in Superpole 2, 0.1s behind Haslam’s time.
Leon Haslam - P8, 1m41.338s
I’m not too unhappy really and we made some good progress towards our preparation for tomorrow’s races. It was a little cooler today, especially this morning, and going from hot to cool conditions makes a big difference in lap times and in set-up. It’s the first time that I’ve gone a lot quicker on a qualifying tyre compared to a race tyre so that was a bonus. We've never found 0.9s like we found today and hopefully we can translate that into the race set-up. Other than that, I’m on the third row at a track where we’ve really struggled in the past and I’m pretty happy.
Jonathan Rea - P10, 1m41.447s
It’s been a little frustrating to be honest because we were optimistic coming here with the new specification on the engine. We’ve had a few problems which is making it hard work and this is not where I want to start from. It’s been a tough weekend so far but the plan for tomorrow morning is to go back to the engine spec that we’ve been running all season. That might put us back a little with regard to electronics settings so warm-up will be crucial. But we need to do something because to race in the top five with the current setting is not possible.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
Eighth position for Leon is not too bad and he also made quite a step improving his lap time on a qualifying. For the race, we still need to dial in a few things because we’re losing too much in the first split so we’ll find a solution for that. Jonathan was tenth and we hoped to make more progress than we did. We chased our tails a little with settings and we’ll make a big change for tomorrow. We’re a little bit behind compared to yesterday and our rivals have all made a jump up today.
Weather
Sunny Intervals
Air
30°C
Track
50°C
Humidity
49%
Qualifying Results - Superpole 2 times
1 Loris Baz 1m40.298s FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Davide Guigliano 1m40.533s ITA DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team
3 Tom Sykes 1m40.561s GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
4 Marco Melandri 1m40.822s ITA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
5 Sylvain Guintoli 1m40.877s FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
6 Eugene Laverty 1m41.092s IRL SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
7 Chaz Davies 1m41.199s GBR DUCATI Ducati Superbike Team
8 Leon Haslam 1m41.338s GBR HONDA Pata Honda
9 Alex Lowes 1m41.421s GBR SUZUKI Voltcom Crescent Suzuki
10 Jonathan Rea 1m41.447s GBR HONDA Pata Honda
