Championship leader Jonathan Rea grabbed his third pole of the 2017 season, after the Kawasaki rider obliterated the outright lap record at the TT Circuit Assen.
Rea has been in superb form all weekend, setting a devastatingly consistent race run in free practice on Friday and getting to within a tenth of the outright lap record on a race tyre in FP3, doing so again after the first run in Superpole two.
The Northern Irishman lit up the timing screens with red sectors on his final timed lap and went almost a second clear of Loris Baz’s 2014 pole record at the Dutch venue with a 1m33.505s.
That time did come under some threat in the closing seconds, early SP2 leader Tom Sykes, who is battling illness still, going fastest in the third sector. However, the Kawasaki rider lost out in the final sector and will line up second.
Ducati’s Chaz Davies completed the top three, but was left feeling aggrieved at the end of the session after he felt he was baulked by pole man Rea on his final attempt, the pair engaging in a heated exchange in parc ferme.
Milwaukee Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori heads row two after putting in his best qualifying of the year in fourth, with the sister Aruba bike of Marco Melandri and his team-mate Eugene Laverty for company.
Barni Racing’s Xavi Fores only just escaped the first part of qualifying, but went on to put his customer Panigale a respectable seventh on the grid ahead of home favourite Michael van der Mark, who’ll be disappointed with eighth.
Althea BMW’s Jordi Torres slotted into ninth ahead of Nicky Hayden, who also came through SP1, Leon Camier and Alex Lowes. Puccetti Racing’s Randy Krummenacher was pipped to a place in the second part of qualifying by just over a tenth of a second, but 13th signals a big improvement from Swiss rider and his team.
Alex De Angelis was a further tenths a drift in 14th on his Pedercini Kawasaki ahead of Roman Ramos and the luckless Stefan Bradl, who was hindered in the early stages by a mechanical issue with his Honda.
Tati Mercado will be disappointed with 17th after such a strong showing last time out in Aragon, the Ioda rider just a few hundredths clear of Raffelle De Rosa, who makes his first appearance with the Althea team as Markus Reiterberger’s replacement.
