After showing World Supersport front-row pace for most of the last two days at Phillip Island, Brits Gino Rea and Kyle Smith were just demoted to fourth and fifth places in qualifying by Lorenzo Zanetti.
Londoner Rea is returning to the series with Simon Buckmaster’s CIA Honda team while Yorkshire-born Smith, who lives in Spain, takes over where Michael van der Mark left off at Pata Honda after spending his time in Superstock 1000 series.
“Lap time wise I am happy to close to 0.2seconds off the leader. Position wise I was chasing the front row and it is frustrating as we had the potential to achieve it,” said Rea.
“I did not get the session together the way I wanted and wasted the tyre. To get the best out of the Pirellis you need to make the time in the first two or three laps. I did my best lap time on the eighth lap that is a good sign for the race. Overall I am happy but we will keep working to make another step improvement tomorrow.”
Today was Smith’s debut qualifying session on the CBR600 and he was pleased to have been able to mix it with the title favourite, only losing out by a little over half a second after a crash put him on the back foot.
I’m really, really happy to take a second row start in my first World Supersport qualifying session. I’ve had some pretty good results in the past from the second row but I think this morning actually went better than this afternoon,” said Smith.
“I pushed a little bit too hard in qualifying and had a crash. I managed to get back on and went a bit better when the guys fixed the bike, but I think I was trying a bit too hard. But, that happens sometimes and all in all I’m feeling really good. We’ve got a little trouble with tyre life which we’ll work on some more tomorrow, but this track has always thrown up tyre problems.
“I’m quite aggressive on the throttle and like to spin the rear but that really doesn’t help here, so I need to work on that. I’ll try to get a good start and be smooth and concentrate on not wearing that tyre out before the end of the race.”
