World SuperSport 2001 - Round 3 - Qualifying 2
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Paolo Casoli took pole position for round three of the World Supersport championship with the fastest lap in Saturday's crash-hit, final qualifying session at the Sugo circuit in Japan. The Italian Yamaha rider sits on pole position for the second successive week after a session which was stopped twice, following separate crashes involving wild card rider Osamu Deguchi and Antonio Carlacci. Both riders escaped serious injury and both crashed on the exit of the second corner. Casoli lines up alongside Honda's Fabien Foret on the grid after the Ten Kate team rider shot into second place in the closing stages of the session. Casoli's team-mate James Whitham starts from third while Foret's team-mate and championship leader Pere Riba completes the first row. Piergiorgio Bontempi leads row two for Sunday's 25-lap race and he is joined by Fabrizio Pirovano and seventh-placed, BKM Honda rider Kevin Curtain who missed the front row by a only couple of tenths. Curtain crashed with 13 minutes to go but still managed to take the 7th spot on the grid. Kevin Curtain - "The front fork worked much better today. As it got a quite hot in the afternoon, we chose a harder front tyre which might have caused my front end lose. But it could have also been something on the surface of the track. I'm not too sure. I'm happy to be going into the race on the second row although the first was possible if not for the crash. It should be ok for the race tomorrow, 11 riders lapped in the 1'33s and I think the race pace will be low 34s. So if you can do that you're knowing that you are going into the race comfortable." BKM Team Manager Michael Bartholemy, is taking balance of the beginning of the Japanese weekend where the results of the two BKM riders were once again very different : "Kevin has done a very good job during the two qualifying days and the main thing is that we found a good set-up for this track. Regarding Ivan Goi, I think he is a very good rider, but Supersport might not be his category. He certainly doesn't have a lot of fun to ride this bike and we will have to discuss together to take a decision.” Pirovano also walked away from a crash today. Suzuki's Katsuaki Fujiwara completes the second row while German Yamaha team-mates Christian Kellner and Jorg Teuchert are ninth and 10th respectively. Adam Fergusson starts from 12th on the Alpha Technik Honda. Karl Muggeridge was 15th - “The bike set-up was good this afternoon and we got rid of the problems we had yesterday. With all the red flags and crashes out there this afternoon, it was just not possible for me to qualify any better. I know I could have gone 6 tenths quicker, but I just had a really bad timing with all the traffic, which is quite important on this narrow track. I’m hoping for a good start tomorrow - I’ll need to be very lucky in the first two laps to get a chance to make it to the front.” Castrol Honda's Chris Vermeulen will start from 21st place. |