Aruba.it Ducati’s Michael Ruben Rinaldi has secured pole position for tomorrow’s first round of the 2017 European Superstock 1000 race, pipping Max Scheib right at the death.
Scheib came into today’s 30-minute qualifying as favourite for pole after topping the combined times at the end of free practice yesterday. Indeed, the Nuova M2 Aprilia rider took over top spot early on and continued to whittle away at his time.
Posting a 1m52.247s to go underneath the outright lap record in the final minutes, Scheib looked set. However, Rinaldi put in a superb final effort to pip him to pole by just 0.002s.
Marco Faccani was three tenths of a second adrift in third on his Althea BMW, with Rinaldi’s team-mate Mike Jones just under a tenth behind in fourth. Roberto Tambruini slotted into fifth despite a late fall at the fast right of Turn 2.
French rider Florian Marino will be disappointed at being four tenths off of his Pata Yamaha team-mate at the back of the second row. Puccetti Racing’s Toprak Razgatlioglu just missed out on Marino’s time and heads the third row, with Illia Mykhalchyk and Jeremy Guarnoni for company.
Luca Vitali guided the second of the Nuova RSV4s to 10th on the gird, the Italian over a second down on team-mate Scheib. Marvin Fritz, Federico Sandi, Luca Marconi, Federico D’annunzio and Sebastian Suchet completed the top 15.
RSV Phoenix Suzuki rider Kevin Calia was unable to set a time after an early crash, which resulted in the Italian rider being taken to the medical centre. We await further news on his condition.
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