Current Bennetts British Superbike Championship leader Jason O’Halloran claimed pole position for this afternoon’s opening race at Knockhill with the McAMS Yamaha rider edging out Christian Iddon (VisionTrack Ducati) by 0.055s.
O'Halloran's lap of 47.255s saw him come out on top whilst Danny Buchan, the pace setter in free practice, took third on the Synetiq BMW rider.
After defending champion Josh Brookes, Kyle Ryde, Gino Rea, Dan Linfoot, Andrew Irwin and Joe Francis advanced from Q1, 18 riders duly lined up for the 12-minute Q2 session and it was Iddon who set the initial pace with his first flying lap being 47.621s.
He improved considerably second time around at 47.310s with Buchan slotting into second with a time of 47.433s and O’Halloran slightly further back in third. Team-mate Tarran Mackenzie was down though, crashing heavily at Clark Curve whilst Brookes began to make strides forward with 47.686s being his fastest lap of the weekend.
Rory Skinner was bringing his free practice form into qualifying and put the FS-3 Racing Kawasaki into fourth at the halfway-stage but team-mate Lee Jackson soon shuffled him back a spot as he jumped up to third.
He didn’t stay there long though as Peter Hickman quickly overhauled him and O’Halloran then relegated the FHO Racing BMW rider to fourth as he lapped at 47.255s to take over at the top of the leaderboard.
In the closing stages, there were no changes in the leading three places and so it’s O’Halloran, Iddon and Buchan that will occupy the front row for the opening race of the weekend.
Hickman maintained fourth but late changes saw Bradley Ray (Rich Energy OMG Racing BMW) move up to fifth and push Jackson to sixth whilst Ryan Vickers (RAF Regular & Reserve Kawasaki) moved up to seventh which pushed Skinner back another spot to eighth. Kyle Ryde took ninth on the second OMG Racing machine to round out the third row of the grid.
Gino Rea (Buildbase Suzuki) completed the top ten with Brookes shuffled all the way back to 13th. He’ll head up a star-studded fifth row as he’ll be joined by Tommy Bridewell and Mackenzie, the latter’s crash proving costly as he slipped back to 15th.
