Jonathan Rea will start tomorrow’s ninth-round World Superbike races from the front row of the grid after setting the third-fastest time in this afternoon’s Superpole at Silverstone in the UK.

In an often-confusing Superpole, the 26-year-old from Northern Ireland lapped the 5.902km circuit in a time of 2m05.078s, just 0.2s from pole sitter Eugene Laverty.

Superpole 3 was declared wet after all participants had registered a flying lap of Silverstone but those lap-times were scrapped in favour of a 20-minute wet session, which in fact started dry. After some light rain, the riders went out again with just a few minutes remaining on the clock to register their final lap-times.

Rea’s Pata Honda World Superbike team-mate, Leon Haslam, qualified for Superpole 2 but was unable to progress and will start tomorrow’s two 18-lap races from 12th place on the grid.

Jonathan Rea – P3 2m05.078s

I almost lucked into that, which wouldn’t have been nice, so it was really cool to go out at the end with some dry track so everyone could put in a lap-time. I actually only went out to practice a start but I saw how dry it was out there and thought I’d give it another go. It’s a good job I did, because I would have been bumped off the front row position that I took with my earlier lap time. It was a little chaotic but I’m quite happy to be on the front row because it’s good for the team – we made a big set-up gamble today and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s two long races. It’s also the last race that my wife Tatia can attend before our baby is due to be born so I hope we can put on a good show!

Leon Haslam – P12 2m05.573s

We’ve been struggling to find the right chassis settings most of the weekend and ended up going in a few wrong directions today. We thought we had something for Superpole but that turned out to be a mistake, even though I don’t think it would have changed the result too much if we hadn’t tried it. Hopefully, we can rectify that tomorrow and have a good go in the two races.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

Unfortunately, Leon has had some problems with settings here. We have made a few changes to the bike and ended up going nowhere. I think we should have been at least top eight but we’ve ended up 12th, which I’m a bit sad about. We’ll have to re-think one more time and come up with something for the warm-up. We got a bit stuck with Jonathan, too, but some last-minute changes paid off and we were a little lucky that Superpole 3 got red-flagged. Third was a good result, but we still need to find a little more tomorrow to fight for the podium.

Qualifying position

1 Eugene Laverty 2'04.730 IRL APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
2 Carlos Checa 2'04.949 SPA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
3 Jonathan Rea 2'05.078 GBR HONDA Pata Honda
4 Loris Baz 2'05.105 FRA KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
5 Tom Sykes 2'05.949 GBR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Racing Team
6 Chaz Davies 2'06.369 GBR BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
7 Leon Camier 2'06.775 GBR SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
8 Sylvain Guintoli 2'05.569 FRA APRILIA Aprilia Racing Team
9 Davide Giugliano 2'05.750 (SP3) ITA APRILIA Althea Racing
10 Jules Cluzel 2'05.011 FRA SUZUKI Fixi Crescent Suzuki
11 Max Neukirchner 2'05.492 GER DUCATI MR-Racing
12 Leon Haslam 2'05.573 (SP2) GBR HONDA Pata Honda
13 Ayrton Badovini 2'05.492 ITA DUCATI Team Ducati Alstare
14 Michel Fabrizio 2'05.593 ITA APRILIA Red Devils Roma
15 Marco Melandri 2'13.317 (SP1) ITA BMW BMW Motorrad GoldBet SBK Team
16 Mark Aitchinson 2'07.743 AUS DUCATI Team Effenbert Liberty Racing
17 Federico Sandi 2'08.106 ITA KAWASAKI Pedercini Team
18 Vittorio Iannuzzo 2'09.543 ITA BMW Team Grillini Dentalmatic

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