Michael Laverty dazzled the crowd by taking second place on the grid for Sundays race at the sixth round of the British Superbike Championship at Mallory Park.  He claimed his first front row start for Relentless Suzuki by TAS team who debuted into the category this year.
The Toomebridge rider visibly improves session by session, round by round and today gave the team their most succesful result so far.  With six minutes to go of the dry qualifying session Laverty stormed his way to the top spot setting a time of 0'56.109s.
It was snatched away by Tom Sykes of Rizla Suzuki in the last few seconds of the session, but still setting a fastest time ahead of the unstopable Airwaves Ducati Shane Byrne.
Laverty who currently sits eighth in the championship won the British Supersport Championship for the team last year prior to taking on the big boys this season.  Relentless who are known for their success in road racing are progressively becoming well known on the short circuits not only through Michael Laverty, but also Ian Lowry who runs in the Fuchs-Silkolene Supersport championship. 
Regarding his result and season so far Laverty said: "I am really pleased and I was running first for a while, but it's my first front row. The season is going not too bad, I've been reasonably happy, I didn't expect to challenge factory teams so early on in the season.  I thought I would be where I am, but thought it would take longer."
"Credit to the team they've done a great job.  Not many other teams can come onto the championship and in the first year be challenging the factory teams.  Snetterton was the first time I kept with them and seem to have continued to do that here at Mallory.  I aim to get on the rostrum."
When asked why he didn't expect this success so soon he said: "We've had to develop a new bike, this is the first time we have been in Superbike, we had no settings and we were up against the likes of Airwaves who did. I am gelling with the bike, I like Suzukis and people did warn me off them after Rizla last year, but this year they have upped their game as well.  It's a good bike'.
Laverty, a motocross champion has been road racing since 1997 when he started in the British GP125cc and has previous experience within the Superbike championship after riding regularly for Paul Bird in 2005 and 2006. 
Talking about the difference between the Supersport and Superbike championship he said: "You could relax more in Supersport as you just had to concentrate on setup.  With Superbikes it is a wee bit tougher, each session everybody up's their game, you've got to be on top of it all the time.  The 600cc was more fun, it had just the right amount of horsepower, the Superbike has slightly more."
"It is more of an animal, if your settings are off it can be a bit wild.  We have a good chassis, a new engine, which has smoother power and also a better cluch, so now if we can improve on that it will be even better.  At the beginning of the year we had a problem with the tyre not gripping the wheel properly so it was spinning, but that has all been sorted now."
Reviewing the season ahead Laverty said "I aiming to win or get on the podium as soon as possible, we are going really well, we will turn up somewhere and everything will be right and it will happen.  At the end of the season I think that fifth and sixth in the championship is possible after the two Hondas and Ducatis,  Tom Sykes is doing really well and will be hard to beat so that's why I say sixth." 
Laverty has claimed a couple of fourth places so far this season, narrowly missing out on that podium spot, that all looks set to change.