Team England is leading the way at a wet and blustery Donington Park today, with two out of three pole positions in the inaugural MotoSix Nations event. Riders are having to battle the elements during qualifying with the 25-minute 600cc session being halted for 15 minutes in due to hailstones.

Matt Bilton led the bulk of the session for the English team and his team-mate Sam Lowes took second place just 0.17secs off the pole time. It was Northern Ireland’s Alastair Seeley who picked up third place on the time sheets and Jack Kennedy from Southern Ireland took up fourth place.
Click here to download all qualifying times
As MotoSix is a team event with six riders in each team, the times from each rider were added up and divided by six to give the aggregate time for the whole team. It was on this basis that the grid was set giving England pole, Northern Ireland in second place, Isle of Man in third and Southern Ireland in fourth place.

The team managers now have to allocate the grid slots to their riders so the pole sitters are yet to be decided.
 
In the 1000cc class the pole position went to Northern Ireland thanks to occasional road racer, Alastair Seeley heading the time sheets. He was closely followed by England’s Richard Cooper and Northern Ireland’s Alastair Kirk took third. Another pure road racer to make his way up the time sheets was Scotland’s Les Shand who finished fourth.

This was the only qualifying session not to suffer with the weather and it was the most exciting of the day with the number one position changing constantly throughout. Northern Ireland lines up next to England with Scotland third and Eire fourth.

The second pole position to go to England was thanks to the Sidecar team. The Sidecars had 15 minutes on track before the rain came down rendering the rest of the session useless. The fastest men on track were Nick Crowe and Mark Cox followed by fellow Manx men Dave Molyneux and Daniel Sayle in second place. The first of the English team’s came home in third place with Simon Gilbert and Mark Howard and the first Scots home were Scott Lawrie and James Connel in fourth place.

All members of the England Sidecar team finished inside the top ten and it was this consistency that gave them the better aggregated time and pole position. The Isle of Man lines up in second place with Scotland in third. Multiple World Sidecar Champion Tim Reeves and his partner Patrick Farrance were victims of the weather and qualified in 11th position.

The MotoSix race action kicks off tomorrow at 1125 for the first brace of races and round two starts at 1510.