@Pata @Honda’s Kyle Smith will start tomorrow’s sixth-round World Supersport race from the fourth row of the grid following a difficult qualifying session this afternoon at Donington Park in the UK.
The 23-year-old Donington debutant went into the 45-minute qualifying session in confident mood having spent all three free practice sessions getting himself acquainted with the unfamiliar 4.023km circuit adjacent to the UK’s East Midlands airport.
However, on only his second lap, Smith outbraked himself going into turn 12 and made contact with the machine of another competitor, sending both into the gravel. The British rider was able to return his Honda CBR600RR to the pits where his crew set about repairing the damage.
Smith was able to rejoin with just six minutes remaining in the qualifying session to put in his best two laps of the weekend. He will start tomorrow’s 20-lap race from 12th place on the grid.
Kyle Smith - P12, 1m31.179s
It’s not been a great weekend up until now, even though the bike is feeling good and my lap times have dropped in each session. I felt strong going into qualifying this afternoon and thought I could be on the front two rows. But I made a mistake very early on and ran into the back of [Marco] Faccani, for which I have apologized. It was a rider error on a race track, which can happen. The bike was a bit mangled up in the crash but I managed to get it back to the pits and the guys worked really hard to get me back out with six minutes to go. I only got two laps but managed to improve my position quite a lot and put in my fastest lap of the weekend. I felt quite comfortable doing that and my race pace in a simulation yesterday was really OK so hopefully, if I can get a good start, we can get a decent result.
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Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
We had quite a decent morning when we did a lot of laps to get a race rhythm and improved our pace. We also got some good information on what we needed to change for the qualifying session. Unfortunately Kyle made a small mistake on only his second lap of qualifying and crashed with another rider. We managed to repair the bike and right at the end he put in his fastest lap of the weekend. It’s not perfect because we lost a lot of time in the session but we still have warm-up tomorrow and we’ll give it our best shot in the race.
Weather
Sunny Intervals
Air
16°C
Track
25°C
Humidity
65%
Qualifying Results
1 Kenan Sofuoglu 1m29.925s TUR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Puccetti Racing
2 Kyle Ryde 1m30.344s GBR YAMAHA Pacedayz Yamaha
3 Jules Cluzel 1m30.562s FRA MV MV Agusta Reparto Corse
4 Luke Stapleford 1m30.627s GBR TRIUMPH Profile Racing
5 Lorenzo Zanetti 1m30.640s ITA MV MV Agusta Reparto Corse
6 Patrick Jacobson 1m30.654s USA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Intermoto Ponyexpres
7 Sam Hornsey 1m30.837s GBR TRIUMPH Profile Racing
8 Gino Rea 1m31.028s GBR HONDA CIA Landlords Insurance Honda
9 Roberto Rolfo 1m31.276s ITA HONDA Team Lorini
10 Fabio Menghi 1m31.342s ITA YAMAHA VFT Racing
12 Kyle Smith 1m31.179s GBR HONDA Pata Honda World Supersport Team
