James Toseland (Winston Ten Kate Honda) made strong early progress on his CBR1000RR at Misano, finishing the day eighth fastest, but consistently finding himself in the top echelons during each practice session. He would finish eighth overall, but only 0.650 seconds away from the quickest rider. Karl Muggeridge (Winston ten Kate Honda) had a crash, which held back his progress on the stopwatches, but otherwise felt day one was a move in the right direction for machine set-up and tyre evaluation. He finished day one 15th quickest, but knows there is great room for improvement in the final qualifying session on Saturday morning.
With track temperatures peaking well over 50°C Misano was once more a stiff test for all the competing riders. The main problem to overcome, however, was the air temperature of over 30°C, and the competition itself was equally searing, with 14 riders within a second of Troy Bayliss’ pole time, and 25 within two seconds.
Ronald Ten Kate - Team Manager“It is going quite well on the Superbike side of things. With James we have already made quite a few longer runs on race tyres, and he seems to be able to put in pretty good times consistently. At the end we tried to put in some new tyres and make some better lap times but unfortunately we did not manage to do that. But tomorrow is another day. We still have quite a few improvements we can make to the machine anyway. For Karl we had basically the same strategy; running race tyres and then going for a quicker lap with a new rear tyre. In his quick lap he had a crash, but for sure he will be up the grid after tomorrow. Our aim is to get both riders on the front row.”
James Toseland – (8th position – Fastest lap time 1’35.553)“We were consistently one of the quickest and just with the new race tyre we have one problem around the long left corner, when it’s in a lower gear at maximum torque. The times are very close, so I’m not too worried about eighth place right now, because the bike feels good and the team is working well.”
Karl Muggeridge – (15th position – Fastest lap time 1’35.965)“We had a few things to try in that timed session and we ran out of time a bit, so we didn’t get a chance to put in a new front tyre with the new rear, to find the best overall setting for today. So I just went with a front that had done a dozen laps and the rear was brand new. It gave me a few warnings but on the last chicane, even though it all felt right until I fell, I ended up on my head. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Otherwise things feel pretty good, we have good speed from the bike, and I am confident we can do it; but we don’t need these little setbacks along the way. But we have another qualifying tomorrow anyway.”
Results Qualifying 1: 1. Bayliss - Ducati - 1'34.903
2. Corser - Suzuki - 1'35.016
3. Laconi - Kawasaki - 1'35.166
4. Walker - Kawasaki - 1'35.255
5. Martin - Petronas - 1'35.313
8. Toseland - Winston Ten Kate Honda - 1'35.553
15. Muggeridge - Winston Ten Kate Honda - 1'35.965
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