Kawasaki Racing Team’s Jonathan Rea heads into this evening’s potentially title-deciding race one on pole position after a brilliant final lap on qualifying tyres in the final part of Superpole.
The Northern Irishman stands on the precipice of his second successive WorldSBK title as he comes into this round 48 points ahead of teammate and second-placed man Tom Sykes. Rea made his intentions clear from the off in SP2, going top on race tyres with a 1m57.510s before smashing the lap record on his qualifying tyre lap.
Rea took the chequered flag with a lap of 1m56.356s to claim just his second pole of the season. The KRT rider deposed Honda’s Nicky Hayden, who had a tremendous run through the final sector to go top briefly with a 1m56.561s. Ducati’s Chaz Davies completed the top three, and he’ll be one to watch later this evening as he seeks his 10th win of the 2016 season.
Sylvain Guintoli begins his final round as a Yamaha rider from fourth on the grid ahead of Sykes, who needs a miracle in race one if he is to keep the championship battle alive heading into Sunday’s final race of the season. The Yorkshireman was only a tenth adrift of his teammate after the initial runs, but strung together a scrappy qualifying tyre lap to go just fifth. Alex Lowes completes the second row on the second of the Pata Yamaha’s.
Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores put in a reasonable lap to put his Ducati seventh on the grid, with Lorenzo Savadori and Michael van der Mark completing row three. The Dutch rider had to contest SP1 for this fourth time this season, though made it through with ease ahead of Davide Giugliano. The Italian, incidentally, lines up 11th sandwiched between Jordi Torres and Leon Camier.
Raffaele de Rosa will start his second WorldSBK appearance from a respectable 13th on the grid, the newly-crowned Superstock 1000 Champion racing with Althea BMW this weekend as a gift for winning the STK 1000 title two weeks ago in Jerez. Josh Brookes starts his final race as a Milwaukee BMW rider from 14th ahead of the second Ioda Aprilia of Alex de Angelis.
Leon Haslam’s maiden Superpole appearance since 2015 ended in a slightly disappointing 16th, though the Briton hasn’t endured an easy weekend on the Pedercini Kawasaki thanks to a technical fault in practice yesterday. He’ll start alongside Markus Reiterberger and the MotoGP-bound Karel Abraham.
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