Press Release:Broc Parkes was in competitive form in qualifying at Valencia, making it through to Superpole 2 and ending up 13th on the final starting grid. After regulation qualifying Parkes was an impressive tenth, only 0.259 seconds from provisional pole, having made the best use of the test sessions the team took part in at Valencia last week. He easily progressed through Superpole 1, then in Superpole 2 he was in the mix again, finishing 13th and starting the races on Sunday from the first place on the fourth row.
Qualifying in general was astonishingly close once again, with Parkes' team-mate Makoto Tamada only 1.321 seconds behind provisional pole, but 24th in the rankings, four places from the cut-off point for Superpole qualification.
Makoto had missed out on last week’s tests due to a previous hip and left big toe injury, left over from a crash in Qatar. His painful toe caused him problems all through practice and qualifying, and ultimately held back his lap times.
Before Superpole, there were 11 riders less than 0.3 seconds from provisional pole in the first European based races of the year, underlining how close the competition is in WSB racing this season.
Broc Parkes: “Two or three tenths and we could have been inside the top eight. The bike is getting a lot easier to do the best times on and we are working better together as a team every time out. Overall, we have been stronger than we were at the flyaway races outside Europe. In the races on Sunday I think our bike will be quite good; it feels like it has improved since Qatar, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow with the grip over full race distance. I am confident in the tyres I intend to use, even if we did try out a different front tyre at one stage; but I don’t think it’s a step forward. For the race we have pretty much chosen our tyres.”
Makoto Tamada: “Today we tried many settings but in the first corner and second corner the engine braking settings were not perfect and I locked the rear a little and slid into the corners. Tomorrow in warm-up we will change the engine set-up to try to improve this. We went in the direction of harder suspension at this track and the feeling was good but we lost a bit of final grip. My toe injury is on my gear-shifting foot and it painful, so painful that it affected my concentration.”
