World SuperSport 2002 - Round 10 - Oschersleben - Qualifying 2

Fabien Foret’s run of pole positions came to an end this afternoon in Oschersleben. Katsuaki Fujiwara just beat Foret to that coveted Breil pole-winner’s watch, but as Fabien has won five of them already this season, four in a row, he’s not too disappointed.

“The most important thing is the race,” he said after qualifying had ended. “OK, I always like to make it into pole position but I am on the front row and that’s important here. I made some mistakes on my two fastest laps, which cost me time, I think I would have claimed pole without them. My race set up is very good, as always my Ten Kate Honda CBR600FS is very fast but the race will be close again. I will try to conserve my tyres and my energy for a strong finish in the race.”

Behind him his team mate Iain MacPherson waited until the closing stages of the session to jump up the order, “I was starting to panic when I was still back on the third row,” admitted the Scotsman. “That’s not a good place to start from here as the track is very twisty and you need a good start, otherwise you just get bogged down in race traffic. I got a little more aggressive in the closing stages and that did the trick. I was relieved when I got up onto the second row, even though I made a couple of mistakes on my fast lap.”

MacPherson starts Sunday’s race from sixth on the grid. Also in the top eight and enjoying Ten Kate racing power were Chris Vermeulen and Karl Muggeridge who qualified fifth and eighth respectively to make it four Ten Kate prepared bikes in the top eight grid slots.

“It’s nice to see so many of our bikes doing so well,” grinned Team Manager Ronald ten Kate. “The race will be very hard, but we have good grid positions and both Pirelli and WP Suspension have worked very hard on the race set up.”