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Dropping temperatures and rising winds greeted the riders as they squared up for the second Superpole session of the season at Brands Hatch, Kent today.
Both Simon Crafar and Steve Plater were eager to put their all-new, fuel-injected Yamaha R1s through the flying-lap discipline and continue the fine progress made in the build-up throughout the previous three timed sessions.
Because tomorrow’s brace of big bike races are to be held around the fast, sub-one minute Indy Circuit the team opted to spend the majority of the build-up looking for a good race set-up with each machine.
The on-track action is likely to be fast and furious with a gaggle of riders fighting it out for every place.
‘Anytime around the mid 46s bracket on a good solid race set-up with race tyres fitted will give us a good chance of a scrap tomorrow. Anything around those times at the end of qualifying will be good for today,’ said Team Boss Rob McElnea at the start of the day.
Both riders qualified that objective in the first session with Plater marginally faster than his team-mate, the riders scoring bests of 46.648 and 46.821 respectively.
Even though the flow of the second session was interrupted by rider Matt Llewellyn crashing out, both Simon and Steve still managed to get to within a fraction of a second of their best times from earlier in the day when track temperatures were higher.
Come the single-lap dash for Superpole things didn’t quite go according to plan, both riders suffering on the one-chance lottery.
Simon still managed to qualify in a fine 11th fastest place, securing a third row start – despite the comparatively slow lap Crafar was still just 0.7s behind Pole Position.
He said: ‘That lap was tough out there! This is always a lottery because one lap is all you have and to jump up the grid order isn’t about pushing hard but more about making as few mistakes as possible. One tiny error costs time and with a track as tight as this that error is very costly.’
Steve highlighted the need for a perfect lap after his outing. He added: ‘I made one mistake coming out of Druids Hairpin and that ruined my concentration for the next couple of corners. I tried to dial too much throttle in on the exit of the turn and was almost spat off the bike – I can’t blame anybody else but me, I made the mistake and it cost me a good time.’
Qualifying times after Superpole: Pole position:
Steve Hislop 46.214, 2 Michael Rutter 46.231, 3 Sean Emmett 46.313, 4 Paul Brown 46.416, 5 John Reynolds 46.439, 6 Glen Richards 46.698, 7 Shane Byrne 46.728, 8 Dean Thomas 46.766, 9 Karl Harris 46.810, 10 Paul Jones 47.011, 11 Simon Crafar Team Virgin Mobile Aiwa powered by Yamaha 47.039, 12 Dean Ellison 47.128, 13 Steve Plater Team Virgin Mobile Aiwa powered by Yamaha 47.183, 14 David Jefferies 47.238, 15 Gary Mason 47.275
