Chris and Tom Battle on in Superpole

2010-05-31 00:20
Both Chris Vermeulen and Tom Sykes improved on the qualifying times set by Kawasaki’s official riders in 2009 at Miller Motorsports Park, but could not make it beyond Superpole session one.

Vermeulen, in his first visit to the impressive Miller Motorsports Park complex, learned the long 4.907km circuit quickly and improved his previous best lap times once he got into Superpole and used qualifying tyres, but he missed moving into Superpole Two by only one place.

Vermeulen is still feeling the effects of his right knee injury, which makes riding particularly difficult on right hand corners, and in changes of direction, as he cannot put weight the footpeg properly. He qualified 17th, with a best lap of 1’49.635.

Tom Sykes had exited combined qualifying in 15th place, but was caught out by a violent highside crash in Superpole One and fell hard, hurting his left shoulder and wrist but not sustaining any fractures. He starts the races from 18th place on the grid.

Track temperatures climbed to over 40°C today, which complicated the set-up work for both Tom and Chris’s technical staff, all of whom are now working on finding ultimate race set-up for tomorrow’s 21-lap races.

Chris Vermeulen: “We got the bike working on a qualifying tyre and my Superpole time was half a second faster than I had been until then. We have been struggling a bit here and the pace is really, really fast. This is a track that Kawasaki went well at last year and we are going quicker than the guys did last year, but everyone else is going faster as well. We have a lot of work to do. I did not take any painkillers yesterday but it was too painful so I am back on them again. My knee is still not good enough yet.”

Tom Sykes: “Last year the team qualified pretty well here but even though we are lapping faster, it is still not quite there. I got caught out in Superpole One with a big high-side crash, which puts me in an unfortunate position on the grid for tomorrow’s races. The high track temperature this afternoon affected us quite a lot and even though we’ve been in the 1’49’s, the pace is so fast that it’s not quite good enough to be in a decent qualifying spot. Despite our misfortune this afternoon the team is working hard on improving the set-up issues and we’ve tried a lot of different things to try and quicken the lap times. I haven’t had a big crash for quite a while so I’m hoping that after a good night’s sleep I won’t be too sore. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow and some ground to be made up but we’ll keep trying and hope for the best.”

Source: Kawasaki Racing Team

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