James Toseland (Winston Ten Kate Honda) scored second in an intense Superpole competition at a warm and dry Imola, having secured his best lap time of the weekend with a 1’49.394. Superpole was taken by championship leader Troy Bayliss, with a blitzing 1’48.804, with Andrew Pitt and Troy Corser now also on the front row of the grid thanks to their Superpole performances. James’ immediate championship rival, Noriyuki Haga, was seventh fastest, and starts from row two.
In 13th place Karl Muggeridge (Winston Ten Kate Honda) will now start from the fourth row of the grid for Sunday’s 21-lap Superbike races, after not setting a Superpole lap as fast as his best time from the opening day of qualifying. Sliding off his machine shortly before Superpole began restricted Muggeridge’s speed in Superpole, but he his confident in his race pace for Sunday’s competition.
Ronald Ten Kate – Team Manager“Good for James to be on the front row and I would say his time was quite good. I never expected that anyone would go into the 1’48s, to be honest. On race tyres we are pretty consistent; we have shown that in all the sessions so far. With raceday to come James always has a little extra to bring, so we are looking forward to the races, which should be very good around here, and all the top guys are up there. Karl I feel sorry for a bit, because crashing out before Superpole does not boost your confidence so he’ll have to put up a fight tomorrow to show what we all know - that he is worth more than his Superpole starting position. We have some work to do in the garage tonight with the electronics package, because finally we have time to do it, now that the chassis set-up is basically OK. We need to fine tune the electronics system and that should bring us quite a bit for tomorrow’s races as well.”
James Toseland – (2nd Position – Superpole lap time 1’49.394)“My Superpole lap was good but I saw Troy’s lap before I went out and that was pretty good also, so he deserves a round of applause for that one - going from a 50.2 to a ‘48.8! But we’ve been good all weekend, top three all weekend, and I put a good consistent lap together to get a front row start. That was important because there is hardly a straight in a straight line here, it’s all braking on angles and braking into corners, then it’s straight into the next one, so it will be tough to pass. It will be tough to win tomorrow over the full race distance but it is possible - and I will be going for it. I want to finish off the season strong.”
Karl Muggeridge – (13th Position – Superpole lap time 1’50.892)“Due to fall I had in the last session, I wasn’t confident enough to push the bike the way I would normally do in Superpole. I could have done better without the crash but I will have warm-up tomorrow to set the bike up the way I want it again, to be competitive in the race.”
Superpole: 1. Bayliss - Ducati - 1'48.804
2. Toseland - Winston Ten Kate Honda - 1'49.394
3. Pitt - Yamaha - 1'49.433
4. Corser - Suzuki - 1'49.442
5. Kagayama - Susuzki - 1'49.497
13. Muggeridge - Winston Ten Kate Honda - 1'50.892
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