Honda Racing’s Jason O’Halloran set the second fastest time during the MCE British Superbike practice session at Snetterton, but the rider spent most the day trying out the harder rear Pirelli tyre.
O’Halloran usually uses the softer SC0 tyre in races, but after 14 laps of the SC1 he was happy with his pace over race distance. On his Fireblade he lapped a 1’48.6 on the harder compound and he was pleased with his consistent solid lap times.
With a few minutes left to FP2 the Honda rider put in the softer SC0’s and slipped into P2, with a very quick 1’47.758 and was only 0.4s off the time of pace-setter, Be Wiser Ducati’s Shane Byrne.
“I did a 13 lap run on an SC1 I did a 48.6 on that. My last lap was a 49.2 but I got caught up in a bit of traffic, so my second last lap was a 48.9. The last lap I am sure would have been a high 48 as well,” said O’Halloran, speaking to bikesportnews.com.
“Obviously not the out right pace that you see on the zero’s, but I know I can probably do the whole race in the 48’s on the SC1 - it might be good enough.
“It is a bit of a dilemma for us. We normally race the zero tyre but we have made the hard tyre work, we done a four or five lap run on a zero. In that session we were working on the race so we will probably do a another 14 lap run on the SC1 tomorrow.
“I need to push to see how fast I can go and if I can go to the low 48’s on the one then we will probably race on the one. We have left the bike the same from the SC1 to the zero just to see what it is doing, but today has been all about the tyres.”
