Tom Sykes (KRT) set a new track best of 1’56.821 in the second Superpole qualifying session at Losail to take his sixth pole win of the year. New World Champion Jonathan Rea (KRT) was second after an exciting Superpole contest, just 0.176 seconds from Sykes and alongside him on the grid for Sunday’s two 17-lap races.

The final flurry of fast times from the top riders, competing under the floodlights at Qatar again this season, saw Sykes come out on top just before the finish, taking his 30th career Superpole win in the process.
Tom was already the second best rider of all time in Superpole and extended his advantage with his latest peerless attack on the stopwatches.

In an unusual schedule for this round the riders had to attack Superpole after only three practice sessions, not four. With neither KRT rider making lap time improvements on their day one efforts in Free Practice 3, their teams had to find immediate improvements to allow them to compete in Superpole shortly afterwards. Slick and effective work saw Tom and Jonathan go 1-2 on the grid. There is one more free practice session to go tonight, before race day on Sunday.

Both riders feel they will have good race pace to face the two floodlit races at the season finale on Sunday evening. Sykes will be pushing himself to make sure he can finish second overall in the points standings while Rea is out to score the greatest number of points in a season, needing just 25 across two races to do so.




Tom Sykes stated:

“It is nice to score 30 Superpoles and honestly speaking it is a reassurance that speed is not an issue. We will keep working and I hope that we can convert a few more of these pole positions into race wins. We improved the set-up just in time for Superpole and in free practice four we need to explore the set-up even further and see how the consistency feels. We will keep working and I need to thank Marcel, Danilo and all my mechanics because we have made a lot of changes to the bike settings, which turned out well. The feeling from the Superpole race tyre was faster and safer than before so I was a little more confident to do some more things with the bike. It should help us for race distance as well.”

Jonathan Rea stated:

“It was good Superpole and I was really happy with my best lap because on my race tyre lap we made some mistakes. We quickly got back to the garage and changed some traction control settings on the bike and it worked a lot better with the Q tyre. I saw from Superpole 1 that the Q tyre was sort of running out of grip at the end of the first lap, so I was careful on the beginning of the out lap. I had no problems, it was a nice lap, and a front row starting position gives me an opportunity for tomorrow. It is a bit weird to do FP4 after Superpole but it is good really, because we still have some issues to work on with the front of the bike to try and have some more stability. I am looking forward to another session to be ready for the race. We are ready now, but to be really ready, we need another session.”

David Salom (Team Pedercini Kawasaki) got out of Superpole one and entered Superpole 2, finishing 12th on the grid. Roman Ramos (Team Go Eleven Kawasaki) was 18th after Superpole 1.