Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea smashed the lap record at the Chang International Circuit to claim back-to-back pole positions in 2017.
The big news ahead of the session was the announcement from Pirelli that there would be no qualifying tyres available for Superpole 2. Several were damaged in transit, and the replacements were held at customs in Bangkok.
This meant the soft race tyres had to be used instead, though this didn’t seem to affect Rea as he blitzed the field.
Already four tenths under the outright lap record in FP3 on a race tyre, the Northern Irishman proceeded to better that by a few tenths to set a new pole record with a 1m32.957s
If the absence of qualifying tyres was going to affect anyone it would be Tom Sykes, as the Yorkshireman is typically the Superpole master. Though not able to take pole, Sykes did give it a good go right at the end of the session, but missed out by 0.235s.
Ducati’s Marco Melandri, for the second weekend in succession, completes the front row, albeit half a second off of the pace. Yamaha’s Alex Lowes was just 0.072s shy of the Italian in fourth, with Chaz Davies brushing off a small crash at Turn 4 to go fifth quickest.
Michael van der Mark has been showing a marked improvement on the YZF-R1 this weekend in Thailand, and backed this up with a decent sixth on the grid for race one.
Eugene Laverty was top Aprilia in seventh having made it through to SP2 yesterday, whilst team-mate Lorenzo Savadori joins him at the back of row three with Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores in between.
Althea BMW’s Jordi Torres suffered a fall at the first corner right at the start of the session, and could only manage 10th as a result. His team-mate Markus Reiterberger completed the top 12.
MV Agusta’s Leon Camier has had another nightmare weekend, as more engine problems hindered him on Friday. Determined as ever, the British rider still dragged his F4 through to SP2 and lines up in between both BMWs in 11th.
Puccetti Kawasaki’s Randy Krummenacher came close to getting into SP2 for the first time, missing out by just two tenths of a second. However, the Swiss rider can’t be too disappointed, as he out-qualified 2006 MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden on the Honda.
Alex De Angelis dragged his Pedercini ZX-10R to 15th on the grid, with Stefan Bradl on the sister Honda in 16th. Ricardo Russo, Ondrej Jezek, Roman Ramos and Ayrton Badovini complete the field.
The opening race of the Thailand WorldSBK weekend gets under way at 16:00 (GMT+6).
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