Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes proved to be the one to beat when he clinched yet another provisional pole position of the season with a 1’47.218 lap in the first World Superbike practice qualifying session in Imola.
Huddersfield’s finest climbed to the top of the timesheets with thirty minutes of the session left, with a 1’47.639 time. He then continued to improve on his times to go even quicker, and on his sixteenth lap went 0.4 seconds faster to cement his place on the provisional front row.
Pata Honda’s Jonathan Rea started the session strongly and was the fastest rider out on the Italian circuit with just under 40 minutes remaining, with a 1’48.071 time, then eight minutes later Sykes got the better of the Northern Irishman, and however hard the Honda racer tried he could not out pace the Kawasaki of Sykes, and had to settle for a 1’47.330 and the second quickest time.
It was a distinctly Italian battle for the provisional final spot on the front row, where Red Devils Roma rider Michel Fabrizio, Ducati Alstare’s Ayrton Badovini and Althea Racing’s Davide Giugliano all tired hard to out pace the other, but it was Fabrizio who was marginally faster, by six hundreds of a second to finish third fastest with a 1’47.619 lap, followed by Badovini and Giugliano, who rounded off the top five.
GoldBet BMW’s Marco Melandri and Aprilia’s Sylvain Guintoli were not far off the pace of the leading top five fastest bikes, but Fixi Crescent Suzuki’s Leon Camier could not find the extra pace to lap in the 1’47’s and had to settle for the eighth fastest time with a 1’48.147 lap, closely followed by Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty. Kawasaki’s Loris Baz rounded off the top ten, but the Frenchman only completed seven laps because of a crash at Acque Minerali but was unhurt.
Melandri's team-mate Chaz Davies again could not make it into the top ten quickest times, and ended the session in eleventh with a 1’48.697. The tall Welshman was quicker than Ducati Alstare’s Carlos Checa who ended the afternoon with the twelfth fastest time. But only four thousands of a second behind the former champ was Pata Honda’s Leon Haslam who clocked a 1’48.725, meaning he finished the qualifying practice session thirteenth overall.
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