World Superbike / Supersport 2005

Weather: sunny, morning 21° C, afternoon 25° C
Track: dry, morning 26° C, afternoon 36° C
2nd Qualifying

Winston Ten Kate rider Karl Muggeridge improved his yesterdays qualifying time by three tenths and will start this afternoon’s Superpole lap from 3rd position. Muggas tried out a couple of different bikes this morning and was able to make a small step forward again, however there is still some more work required on the race setting. The set-up for the qualifying tyres looks pretty good as there is enough grip for that one lap, however they are not quite happy yet with the handling on the race tyres and hope they find more in this afternoon’s free practice before Superpole.

Karl comments: “We are still working on the race set-up, every time we make a small step forward, but it’s just not quite good enough for that podium I’m aiming for tomorrow. I have the feeling we are not too far away and am confident that we will find some more this afternoon. I specially need to improve that third split, that’s were I loose most my time on the race tyres.

Superpole

Karl Muggeridge finished 5th fastest after a bit a disappointing Superpole and will start tomorrow’s two 16 lap races here at Assen from the second row of the grid right behind his team-mate Chris Vermeulen who took his first pole position in Superbikes.

But before that, Muggas and his team got some work to do to bring the CBR 1000 back up to speed and make it a podium contender.

Muggas comments: “That was a very average Superpole lap; I made quite a few mistakes and just couldn’t find the flow. It’s a long track here at Assen, if you make a mistake at the beginning it stretches through the whole lap. The free practice session didn’t quite help to the lead up of Superpole either, I had a silly crash going very slow in my out lap and lost 20 minutes through that until the other bike was ready as we were running different parts on them. I gotta say I’m not too confident in the bike at the moment, we definitely gotta sit down and go through everything to see where we went wrong.”