World SuperSport - Round 3 - Sugo - Friday Qualifying
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James Whitham set the pace with the fastest lap in Friday's opening qualifying session for round three of the World Supersport championship at Sugo in Japan.
Whitham ended the one hour session 0.4s faster than Yamaha team-mate Paolo Casoli with Honda's Pere Riba - winner of the opening round and series leader - third despite a scare in the morning's free practice session. "I picked up a nail in the rear tyre," explained Ten Kate team rider Riba. "The first I knew was when the rear tyre slid around on me and I almost crashed." Piergiorgio Bontempi completes the provisional front row for Sunday's 25-lap race at the 2.32-mile track near Sendai city, in the north of the country. Riba's team-mate Fabien Foret leads the provisional second row on his CBR600 Honda machine with former champion Fabrizio Pirovano sixth on a Suzuki and defending world champion Jorg Teuchert seventh fastest. Suzuki rider Katsuaki Fujiwara completes a provisional second row with the Japanese ace out to impress on home soil in Sunday's race. Scotsman Iain MacPherson is ninth and his Kawasaki team-mate Andrew Pitt completes the top 10. Castrol Honda's Chris Vermeulen was happy with 17th place on his first visit to the Sugo circuit, he said: "The circuit's easy to learn but difficult to get right for a fast lap time. But I'm only one second off a front row start at the moment so I'm pleased with today." BKM Honda's Kevin Curtain - the race winner in Australia last Sunday - set the 13th fastest time. "Everything is going ok, except my front suspension, we've got a problem and we are having trouble rectifying it. So, at the moment I can't go much faster without throwing it up the road. We were trying different things and the qualifying tyre is working very good but the front suspension problems remained. We still have another day to make it work better over these bumps which probably would give us another second", said Curtain. Karl Muggeridge - 15th - “At the moment I’m only on 15th position, but I remember last year I qualified on 17th in Friday’s session and pulled it together in the final qualifying on Saturday. The pace in this year’s first session was a bit hotter than last year but so is the climate. We’ve altered the spring weight from this morning’s free practice, which gave the bike a much better balance and feel through the corners. We still had a bit of a chatter problem at the back, but we’ve got some good directions for tomorrow and the front row is not out of question. It should be alright.” Alpha Technik's Adam Fergusson 16th. |