World SuperSport 2001 - Round 8 - Brands Hatch - Final Qualifying / Grid
| James Whitham took his
first pole position of the year in Saturday afternoon's sun-kissed final
qualifying session for round eight of the World Supersport championship at
Brands Hatch, GB. With one minute to go in the one-hour session, Whitham sent his home crowd of around 35,000 wild as he set the fastest ever Supersport lap time around the 2.6-mile circuit. Alongside Whitham on the front row will be second-placed Andrew Pitt, "I did my best lap with about 20-minutes to go in the session. I thought it was going to be my first pole, but (Jamie) Whitham knocked me off right at the finish. The main thing is I'm on the front row. It's a nice change, because all season I've been having to come from behind and chase. Hopefully I can make a good start and take advantage of my qualifying position. The Kawasaki seems to suit this track. We've been making progress with the suspension all year and my confidence is also improving. I feel I can put the bike where it needs to be. Passing will be hard here, although there's a couple of places where you can get up the inside and overtake under brakes. The only question mark at the moment is whether the race tyres will last the distance. It's very hot and we're struggling with grip after a few laps. It's the same for everyone."
Ten Kate Honda's Fabien Foret
and Kawasaki's Iain MacPherson completes the front row after one of
the most frantic Supersport sessions of the year - which left the leading
20 riders separated by less than one second. Muggas - “We’ve been tracking our tails all weekend with suspension, but we arrived at a decent setting, after we had all this little problems through the weekend like broken down ignitions and what not. We now fixed the problems with the breaks, so they are really good. Suspension is really good, I’m riding with less effort and times are much more achievable. The bikes is working really well, there is maybe one or two problems I have on the track, which we can try to alter in the morning warm-up and it should be easily fixed. Obviously with the setting I had this afternoon I would had hoped better, but the bike cut out on me half way through the session and I had to push it back and then was on my spare bike which isn’t quite as sound as my other bike because we didn’t had the time to bring it up to face even, as we were still trying to find directions. 5th is fine, I’ll get a good start tomorrow, the race settings are really good, so I just need to turn the laps through and we see what happens.” Pere Riba, on a Ten Kate Honda, starts
from seventh with former champion Fabrizio Pirovano eighth. World champion
Jorg Teuchert took ninth place despite a crash at the infamous Dingle Dell
section of the circuit, escaping injury. |
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Final World Supersport qualifying times: |
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