Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam have mixed feelings this evening after today’s Superpole sessions at Motorland Aragon in Spain left them in ninth and eleventh places respectively on the grid for tomorrow’s two second-round World Superbike championship races.

Haslam, particularly, had a testing day which began with a crash in this morning’s second qualifying, causing the British rider to miss the entire 45-minute session. Technical issues in the subsequent free practice hindered his progress further but he qualified for Superpole thanks to his lap time from yesterday.

The 29-year-old British rider made it to Superpole 2 and did his best time on a race tyre, leaving him reasonably satisfied.

Rea, meanwhile, made impressive steps forward, finishing inside the top four in both regulation qualifying and free practice. The 26-year-old from Northern Ireland made it through to Superpole 3, where a broken wheel-speed sensor restricted him to a third row start.

Jonathan Rea – P9, 1m57.765s (Superpole 2)

Today was a mixture of positive and negative, really. We made a lot of progress on our race set-up and, with the electronics, we’ve got kind of close to where I feel we were last year. But, going into Superpole 3, a wheel-speed sensor caught us out and trying to match wheel speeds with everything else under braking went completely out the window and I felt a bit like a passenger. It was partly my mistake staying out for two laps at the beginning and not coming straight in but I wasn’t sure what the problem was and I was trying to change the engine brake settings. We didn’t have enough time left to get out at the end and it was quite frustrating because it was a problem we found out about after Superpole. What I feel should have been the second row is now the outside of the third row, so I can just hope and pray for a clean start tomorrow. We’ve been in the top five all weekend, timing wise, and I feel we did a pretty good race run this morning – a long run – which I was happy enough with. And we’ve improved since then, so it’s just a race where I feel we’ve been handicapped a little bit more than we should be at the start. We’ll see – it’s more experience; I still feel like we’re doing a lot of testing but we’ve got to man-up for two 20-lap races tomorrow.

Leon Haslam – P11, 1m58.329s

I’ve never been so happy to be P11 on a grid! On Friday, we had a lot of problems electronically which we couldn’t get sorted. This morning we went out and I didn’t even get one lap – I had a big crash and lost the whole session and that was the session when we needed to sort a few of the issues. We did the whole session in Free Practice 2 but a sensor had broken and we didn’t find out until after that session. So, going into Superpole 1 was my first go on a bike with sensors working so I was really happy. I think I went 1.6 seconds quicker than I did before, which is quite hard to do when you’re under pressure to do it in one lap. But the bike worked. I made a mistake in Superpole 2, which knocked me out by less than a tenth. So I’m really happy with what we’ve done – we’ve solved the issues that we had but it’s still going to be a tough race tomorrow.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Today with Leon we encountered a lot of problems and we were not really making progress at all. Still, we managed to make Superpole and reached eleventh place in the end, which was pretty good, considering everything. We had to find a setting in Superpole itself and in the end he did a really good lap on a race tyre and started to feel good on the bike. I must say ‘hats off’ to Leon for staying calm, keeping on working and keeping his comments coming. Despite his position, we look forward to the race, and he does, as well. On Jonathan’s side of the garage we managed ninth place and it could have been a possible second row but we had a small problem with the bike. He wasn’t able to put in a good lap time on his last Superpole run and we must apologise for that. These things happen. They should not happen, but they sometimes do, and Jonathan did not get what he deserved today. I hope he can find a good rhythm in warm-up. His race pace is quite good, so we’ll see tomorrow.

Qualifying position

1 Tom Sykes 1'56.339 - SP3 GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
2 Eugene Laverty 1'56.638 IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
3 Chaz Davies 1'56.845 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
4 Sylvain Guintoli 1'57.486 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
5 Jules Cluzel 1'57.540 FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
6 Loris Baz 1'57.869 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
7 Davide Giugliano 1'57.975 ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
8 Marco Melandri 1'58.268 ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
9 Jonathan Rea 2'01.613 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
10 Carlos Checa 1'58.326 - SP2 SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
11 Leon Haslam 1'58.329 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
12 Max Neukirchner 1'59.993 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
13 Ayrton Badovini 1'59.475 - SP1 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
14 Michel Fabrizio 1'59.478 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
15 Alexander Lundh 2'01.029 SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
16 Leon Camier 1'59.379 - SP GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
17 Federico Sandi 2'00.979 ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
18 Ivan Clementi 2'02.140 ITA BMW HTM Racing
19 Mark Aitchinson 2'02.554 AUS DUCATI Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
20 Vittorio Iannuzzo 2'03.201 ITA BMW Grillini DENTALMATIC SBK Team


Championship standings

1 Sylvain Guintoli 45 pts FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
2 Eugene Laverty 45 pts IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
3 Michel Fabrizio 29 pts ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
4 Tom Sykes 22 pts GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
5 Marco Melandri 16 pts ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
6 Jonathan Rea 16 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
7 Leon Haslam 15 pts GBR HONDA Pata Honda
8 Leon Camier 14 pts GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
9 Jules Cluzel 14 pts FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
10 Chaz Davies 13 pts GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
11 Max Neukirchner 11 pts GER DUCATI MR-Racing
12 Loris Baz 10 pts FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
13 Davide Giugliano 10 pts ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
14 Glen Allerton 6 pts AUS BMW Next Gen Motorsports
15 Jamie Stauffer 4 pts AUS HONDA Team Honda Racing
16 Ivan Clementi 4 pts ITA BMW HTM Racing
17 Alexander Lundh 4 pts SWE KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
18 Federico Sandi 2 pts ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
19 Vittorio Iannuzzo 0 pts ITA BMW Grillini DENTALMATIC SBK Team
20 Carlos Checa 0 pts SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare

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