The Stobart Vent Axia Motorsport pairing of Shane Byrne and Tom Sykes will start both of tomorrow’s races from row two of the grid following an incident packed qualifying session at Mondello Park today. In wet weather conditions, Byrne, who qualified on pole position at the previous round at Snetterton, was looking good for a front row start but late in the session crashed at high speed causing the session to be stopped.
After a quick check up in the Medical Centre, Byrne was declared fit but was unable to take part in the restart whereby team mate Sykes managed to elevate himself from a row four start on to row two on his Superbike debut in the wet.
Shane Byrne: “That was a bit of a shame. I went back out towards the end of the session and I outbraked myself and let Kiyo go through and I thought I’d try to catch him back up to get a good time, so the first part of my plan worked, but there is a big bump around the back and the bike unloaded itself and spat me off over the top. It was a big crash but I’m OK which is the main thing, and looking forward to the races tomorrow.”
Tom Sykes: “Overall, I’m happy enough with the second row. As long as you’re on the first two rows you are in with a shout. I’ve had some little niggling problems all weekend and I feel it’s slowed our momentum down but to be fair, there’s still a bit to come from me. I’m sure we’ll pull a decent result off once we get a few things sorted for tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.”
Phil Borley (Crew Chief):“Both riders are on the second row which is not the end of the world, even though it wasn’t an ideal session. Shakey was unfortunate to crash when he had a chance to move up the grid and we had a bit of a problem with Tom’s number one bike so he was on his spare. Both riders seem fairly happy with the bikes in the wet and if it’s dry tomorrow we’ll just have to try and get a good set up in the warm up session.”
The first of the Bennetts British Superbike races gets underway at 12.45 with the second one screened live on ITV1 at 15.45.
Qualifying:1, Jonathan Rea (Honda) 1m46.776s,
2, Ryuichi Kiyonari (Honda) 1m46.867s,
3, Leon Haslam (Ducati) 1m48.534s,
4, Karl Harris (Honda) 1m48.883s,
5, Cal Crutchlow (Suzuki) 1m49.021s,
6, Shane Byrne (Stobart Vent Axia Motorsport Honda) 1m49.172s,
7, Leon Camier (Honda) 1m49.465s,
8, Tom Sykes (Stobart Vent Axia Motorsport Honda) 1m49.626s,
9, Chris Walker (Suzuki) 1m49.814s,
10, Tommy Hill (Yamaha) 1m50.274s.
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