Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam took provisional fourth and fifth places respectively in this afternoon’s opening qualifying session for round nine of the 2013 World Superbike championship at Silverstone in the UK.

The British duo returned from the Suzuka 8-hours race in Japan earlier this week but took no time in adjusting back to their SBK-specification Honda CBR1000RR Fireblades at the 5.902km Silverstone circuit, ending the day separated by just four thousandths of a second.

After grey and overcast conditions this morning, the first 45-minute qualifying session was run in warm, sunny but breezy conditions in which Tom Sykes took provisional pole position.

Jonathan Rea – P4 2m06.349s

We made some good progress straight away and got up to speed early on this morning, so I was really happy. This afternoon we went backwards with the set-up a little bit and we need to revert back to the ride heights that we had earlier. The bike was a little harder to ride, especially in the twisty sections. Looking at everything though, it’s useful to have Leon up there as well because we can learn some things from his data. We’ll sit down and go through it all tonight and learn what we can. It seems we’re faster than last year but in the second session it was quite difficult to do the lap time. We’ll try to make the bike more easy and try tomorrow with some improvements. Engine braking is still a bit of an issue and I feel like I’m being pushed into the corner a little bit, so we need to look at deceleration and then we should be in the ball park. But it’s not bad for a first day!

Leon Haslam – P5 2m06.353s

We’re making progress, even though we have a few issues that we need to resolve, but, all in all, it’s good. It’s always nice to be a little bit higher up the time sheets and, although I’m happy enough with the progress we’ve made so far, we’ve still got a bit of a way to go. The leg injury is not holding me back as much here as it has at earlier rounds, and once we’ve solved these issues we can hopefully make some bigger steps tomorrow.

Pieter Breddels – team-co-ordinator

This morning, Leon was struggling a little and didn’t do a lot of laps so we had to make the bike a little more to his liking. This afternoon he improved a little for a pretty good lap time, so it’s good to see him back near the front and showing his potential. Jonathan started pretty well this morning but we tried some things this afternoon, some of which improved the bike, some of which didn’t. We’ll analyse everything and try to make a better bike for tomorrow.

2013 World Superbike championship, round nine – Silverstone, UK

First qualifying results:

1 Tom Sykes (GBR) Kawasaki 2m05.355ss
2 Leon Camier (GBR) Suzuki 2m06.236s
3 Davide Guigliano (ITA) Aprilia 2m06.332s
4 Jonathan Rea (GBR) Pata Honda 2m06.349s
5 Leon Haslam (GBR) Pata Honda 2m06.353s
6 Eugene Laverty (IRL) Aprilia 2m06.539s

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