British riders Jonathan Rea and Craig Jones have taken provisional pole and second place respectively in this afternoon’s first World Supersport qualifying session.
Rea began the session slowly but banged in a 1’28.117 lap with just 20 minutes of the session gone. Jones, who hovered around the top three for the whole session, found himself bumped down to fourth with six minutes to go but managed to pull out a 1’28.340 with just three minutes to go.
Jones said: "I’m happy enough with that. We had made a change to the bike and it was working well but I went in a bit hot, tucked the front and crashed but it wasn’t serious. I was able to get back out on my number one bike thanks to the hard work of my Parkalgar Honda team, we improved on the lap times so I’m happy with second, I’m confident for tomorrow and for the race.”
Rea said: "We just concentrated on race set-up in the morning practice session and continued that this afternoon. I was pretty happy with everything but, as soon as we put in some fresh rubber, the bike felt even better and I was able to do a succession of pretty quick laps. It’s still only Friday though, so we’ll be looking for more tomorrow."
Yamaha stand-in rider Karl Harris was second for part of qualifying, and it looked like a British one-two-three until a host of riders, led by Broc Parkes, busted Harris down to seventh.
Chris Martin was 16th, Steve Plater, on the BE1 Triumph, was 17th and Graeme Gowland (19th) headed the rest of the Brits.
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