Rea storms to first pole of the season in France
Kawasaki Racing Team’s Jonathan Rea dominated a wet second Superpole session in France to claim his maiden pole position of the season, amazingly his first since the Thailand round last year.
The World Champion Elect was in supreme form from the off in SP2, immediately setting the timing screens ablaze. A string of fast laps culminated in a 1m52.881s to put him seven tenths of a second clear of the field.
Rea’s teammate Tom Sykes will line up alongside for this weekend’s two races at Magny-Cours, though there remains some question marks over his race pace after losing much of yesterday’s FP2 to a rear brake problem. Ducati’s Chaz Davies completed the top three.
Home hero Sylvain Guintoli put in an impressive performance on his Pata Yamaha to head the second row, the Frenchman taking his YZF-R1 to a 1m54.574s. Leon Camier will start from fifth on his MV Agusta despite a heavy fall at the first corner in the closing seconds of the session. Michael Van der Mark edged ahead of his Honda teammate in the final minutes to round out row two.
Lorenzo Savadori has proved on a number of occasions this season that he is one to watch in the wet. The Italian put his Ioda Aprilia eighth on the grid ahead of impressive wild card Matthieu Lagrive. No stranger to the circuit, Lagrive was stunning all day. The French rider was eighth in this morning’s warm up and topped SP1 to progress into SP2, guiding his Yamaha to a 1m56.744s to go ninth in the second part of qualifying.
Xavi Fores completed the top 10, with the injured Alex Lowes and Althea BMW’s Jordi Torres making up the rest of row four. Davide Giugliano compromised his qualifying by crashing on his out-lap in SP1. Unhurt in the incident, the Italian made it back out to go 13th but was almost a second adrift of the top two.
Josh Brookes will be relatively happy with 14th despite coming off on his final lap at the Imola chicane. Just a few hundredths adrift of Brookes was the second Ioda machine of Alex De Angelis, with Luca Scassa, Roman Ramos and Karel Abraham making up the sixth row.