Yakhnich Yamaha’s Sam Lowes will start his home race from pole position after clocking his best time of 2’07.666 in the World Supersport qualifying session at Silverstone this afternoon.
The Lincolnshire lad did not dominate all of the session, MAHI Racing’s Kenan Sofuoglu had that honour. The reigning champ topped the timesheets with 30 minutes of the session remaining.
After spending a lot of time in his garage, Lowes decided to venture back out on to the track and with thirteen minutes to go blitzed the time set by the Kawasaki rider and was the only racer to lap in the 2’07 this afternoon. Lowes did crash out on his final lap at Abbey, but he had already done enough to secure the number one spot on the grid.
The Supersport front row will have a distinctly British feel as ParkinGO MV’s Christian Iddon clocked the third quickest time with a mad last lap dash that produced a 2’08.003. But in doing so he pushed fellow Brit, DMC-Lorenzini’s Kev Coghlan off the front row. The Scottish rider appeared to have done enough to secure a third place start, but Iddon just pipped him to the post and went two tenths of a second quicker than the Perthshire rider, who now has to settle with starting from the second row.
Coghlan is joined by Kawasaki Intermoto’s Florian Marino and Pata Honda’s Michael Van Der Mark. Rivamoto’s Jack Kennedy was as high as fifth with two minutes to go, but unfortunately for the Irishman he could not find the pace to compete for a top five finish and starts the main race on Sunday from eighth on the grid, followed by lap record holder David Salom and wildcard rider Prorace’s Ronan Quarmby, who rounds off the top ten.
MCE British Supersport regulars, Smith Triumph’s Glen Richards and Billy McConnell never made it out of the top twenty quickest times, and start from 21st and 32nd on the grid for the race tomorrow afternoon.
