Federico Caricasulo snatched a Jerez World Supersport pole away from Jules Cluzel as championship leader Lucas Mahias crashed.
Mahias comes into this weekend’s penultimate round of the 2017 WorldSSP season with his first opportunity at wrapping up a maiden world title after second-placed Kenan Sofuoglu was forced to pull out of the remaining races with injury.
31 points clear of nearest challenger Sheridan Morais, Mahias – who topped this morning’s shortened third session – slotted into second after his first run behind GRT Yamaha team-mate Caricasulo.
The fastest man through the first sector at the start of his second run, Mahias‘ session came to an untimely conclusion when he crashed at the Pons corner. Mercifully, the Frenchman was unharmed and will start from fifth.
Just as Mahias went down, PTR Honda’s Jules Cluzel – who will move to the Nerdz Yamaha team next season – shot to the top of the pile with a 1m43.334s.
However, a second pole of the season would not be heading Cluzel‘s way as Caricasulo edged ahead of him by just under half a tenth with a 1m43.285s to claim his first Superpole win since Misano last year.
Title protagonist Morais put his Kallio Racing Yamaha onto the front row in third, 0.356 seconds off the pace, while PJ Jacobsen heads row two on his MV Agusta.
Ant West, who returns to WorldSSP this weekend to take the place of the absent Sofuoglu at Puccetti came through SP1 to qualify sixth.
His team-mate Michael Canducci was just a fraction slower than him in seventh, with compatriots Lorenzo Zanetti and Christian Gamarino – who crashed at the end of SP2 – not far behind him in eighth and ninth.
The top 10 was completed by Niki Tuuli, with the British duo of SP1 pacesetter Kyle Smith and Luke Stapleford rounding out the top 12.
Alessandro Zaccone just missed out of graduation into SP2 with a 1m44.182s and will start as top European Supersport Cup runner in 13th ahead of ESS rivals Hannes Soomer and Rob Hartog – all three covered by a two tenths of a second.
Gino Rea had a laptime cancelled at the end of SP1 and was relegated to 16th, while countryman Stefan Hill guided his Profile Racing Triumph to a season-best 17th.
Puccetti‘s second replacement rider Axel Bassani put his ZX-6R 18th ahead of Alex Baldolini and Hikari Okubo. Scotsman Kev Coughlan will start at the back of the pack on his WorldSSP return thanks to an issue with his Yamaha R6 in SP1.
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