Honda World Superbike Team riders Jonathan Rea and Hiroshi Aoyama completed a frustrating first day at the ninth round World Superbike championship event at Brno in the Czech Republic today.

The CBR1000RR-mounted pair finished 15th and 17th respectively, with Rea walking away from a high-speed crash in this morning’s free practice and light rain affecting this afternoon’s opening qualifying session.

Provisional pole position was taken by Davide Giugliano from Italy with Marco Melandri, Eugene Laverty and Tom Sykes completing the provisional front row. With the threat of rain tomorrow morning, Rea and Aoyama will be working hard with their crews to ensure progression to tomorrow afternoon’s Superpole.

Jonathan Rea – P15, 2m00.911s

It’s been a bit of a frustrating day all together, to be honest. I just haven’t found a great feeling with the bike yet; or the track. But after a long de-brief, the direction we need to go is quite clear. The bike is quite different to when I was here two years ago, when the pace was faster than I can achieve now. But we have that data so tomorrow we can run out with a different linkage which will make the bike work in a better way, I hope. Also, with the corners here being long and flowing, throttle control is really important but right now the ride-by-wire seems to be a bit much. My wrist needs to take over some of the work to get a better feeling. It stopped me having the confidence to really, really push today but I won’t panic because it’s quite logical what we need to do for tomorrow.

Hiroshi Aoyama – P17, 2’01.073s

The results are not very good today. We could improve a little bit from this morning, when we finished inside the top 16, which is better for qualifying, but we don’t know the conditions tomorrow morning, so it might be difficult. I got a better feeling from this morning to the afternoon, but it still wasn’t exactly what we wanted. At least we found out the right way to go and we still want to make some adjustments tomorrow to get a little bit more of a front feeling.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Unfortunately Jonathan had a small crash this morning and that meant we started a little bit behind our competitors this afternoon. Of course, we improved the lap time, but we struggled to find a good setting to find some grip, which seems to have been a problem for a lot of riders today. We certainly have some work to do there, as we do on the other side of the garage. Hiroshi was up to speed more quickly than usual this morning, which was quite positive. In the afternoon, we did improve and we are a little bit close than normal but we still need half a second to get comfortably in Superpole. So work to do there, too!


2012 World Superbike championship - round nine, Automotodromo Brno, Czech Republic

First qualifying results:

1 Davide Giugliano (ITA) Ducati1m59.452s

2 Marco Melandri (ITA) BMW 1m59.545s

3 Eugene Laverty (IRL) Aprilia 1m59.693s

4 Tom Sykes (GBR) Kawasaki 1m59.850s

5 Carlos Checa (ESP) Ducati 2m00.180s

6 Jakub Smrz (CZE) Ducati 2m00.226s

15 Jonathan Rea (GBR) Honda World Superbike Team 2m00.911s

17 Hiroshi Aoyama (JPN) Honda World Superbike Team 2m01.073s


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