Gregorio Lavilla is in no mood to concede his Bennetts British Superbike crown and he underlined his determination by powering his Airwaves Ducati to the fastest ever two wheeled lap of the Silverstone International circuit. That gave the Spaniard his fourth pole start of the season, albeit by a split second from his team-mate, series leading Leon Haslam, and also maintained Lavilla’s hopes of winning the Audi Performance Award, which rewards consistent speed in qualifying over the campaign.
Lavilla ended the session full of smiles, but earlier on, that had been far from the case as his main race bike stopped on the start-finish straight. “I don’t really know what the problem was – it was a pity, the bike had been going well, but the team did a good job with my second machine.”
He rewarded their efforts with a brilliant lap of the 2.213mile circuit, beating off the best of Haslam, with a time of 1m 25.174secs, an average speed of 93.53mph, and almost a second faster than the pole time in the corresponding round of last year.
“Pole is very good, I am riding for the championship and know that here the races will be very hard,” said the reigning champion who will be hard pressed by Haslam, who ran just 0.035secs down on him, and who is bidding to increase his 15 points lead in the series.
Haslam also has the edge, 82-75, over Lavilla in the chase for the £50,000 limited edition Audi S4 Cabriolet, with the two duelling teamsters facing a ‘shoot-out’ for the keys in the final qualifying session at Brands Hatch.
“The car would be good, but I want the championship title – I’m concentrating hard on that, taking it race by race and have to win races. There are still 150 points at stake with the double points in the final,” said Haslam.
Those available points are not lost on Ryuichi Kiyonari, third in the overall rankings, who qualified his HM Plant Honda third fastest, with a time of 1m 25.569secs, but took a bruising in a 150 miles an hour crash at Maggotts midway through the session.
And, Jonathan Rea, who completes the front row of the grid aboard the Red Bull Honda, also took a tumble. He had dictated terms throughout free practice, but tipped off at the Chicane early on.
The team worked quickly to repair his bike, and Rea returned, only to have one flying lap aborted as the session was red-flagged as Michael Laverty crashed, but the 19 year old hit back, setting fourth best time, 1m 25.723secs, to complete the front row of the grid.
Tommy Hill heads the second row aboard his Virgin Mobile Yamaha, a split second up on Karl Harris with Michael Rutter seventh, 1m 25.778secs, aboard the Stobart Honda, ahead of former champion Shane Byrne riding the Rizla Suzuki.
Laverty, riding the second Stobart bike, ran ninth, ahead of James Haydon, returning to the action after a lengthy layoff through injury, while Peter Hickman was the fastest of the Hawk Kawasaki riders, running eleventh from Vivaldi Suzuki’s Ben Wilson.
Chris Martin, riding the PR Branson Honda, the clear leader in the British Superbike Cup title chase, was comfortably the fastest of the independents, with a lap of 1m 26.914secs, running half a second faster than Marty Nutt, aboard the NuttTravel Suzuki.
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