World SuperBike 2001 - Round 10 - Brands Hatch - SuperPole/Grid
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Neil Hodgson will start from pole
position in Sunday's 10th round of the
World Superbike championship at Brands Hatch, GB after setting the
fastest time in Saturday afternoon's
Superpole final qualifying competition.
His fellow British rider Steve Hislop,
a wild card for the Brands Hatch round, starts alongside Hodgson
after setting the second fastest lap time.
“I didn’t like this track last year
but it’s getting better all the time”, declared Bostrom in the
post-race press conference. “I love the crowd here and it makes
everything a lot better. The Californian weather helps a lot as
well! My game plan is to win both races but it’s going to be tough
against Neil and Steve. I expected to do better in Superpole but I
backed off a little towards the end of my fast lap. The afternoon
session went really well and I hit onto something so I’m really
smiling for tomorrow’s race”. Wild card John Reynolds starts from seventh and Troy Corser set the eighth best time to complete row two in eighth place.
Corser - "The
engine blew on my number one bike and I had to use the spare bike.
That was a shame because the engine (until it blew up) felt a bit
stronger. We took the rear shock out of the number one bike and put
in the spare, but the bike didn't quite have the same feeling so I
took it a bit steadily on my Superpole lap. I could've pushed harder
but I might have crashed. In normal qualifying I was going fast on
race rubber and the times were consistently good, sop I'm quite
happy about that. Tonight the boys will put in a new engine in the
number one bike and I'll give it a try in the morning warm-up before
deciding which one to ride. Obviously the second row is not as good
as the first, but as long as I can make a good start, I think I can
get a good result." Troy Bayliss is a disappointing 14th on the grid after oil leaked on to this rear tyre - “I was very lucky to come back in one piece from my Superpole lap because of my problem, after struggling a bit all weekend, today we were heading in the right direction but we had a bit of bad luck. On my race tyre I didn’t do too bad and we’re not too far away from the rest. Tomorrow I’ll have to be very forceful and see how it goes in the two races”. Peter Goddard did not make SuperPole and will start from 27th on the grid as they continue to develop the Benelli - “The aim tomorrow is to finish and score some more championship points. Our lap times on race tyres here have been almost as fast as when we put the qualifying tyres on so that's encouraging for tomorrow. We have a good base setting for the Benelli now and we haven't had to make too many changes from the set-up we ran at Laguna. This weekend our problem has been engine reliability. I had an engine failure in both qualifying sessions which cost us track time, and that's important with a new bike. The bikes are running consistently high RPM at this track so it's hard on the engines around here. There is also a lot of hard braking. Hopefully we have better reliability in the races because everything else is working well. Since we first raced the bike at Misano there hasn't been a lot of time for development, especially with the travel getting to America and back. After this weekend there's a longer break so we are looking forward to some new things later in the season to keep improving. I think we can work our way forward in the races tomorrow, like we did at Laguna, and hopefully we can be in the points. As usual British wildcard riders are going fast on their 'home' track so if we get in the points it will be a very good result. The weather has been hot and the track is a little more slippery than usual."
Riders who did not make the SuperPole cut off and how
they will sit on the grid |
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