With heavy rain during the afternoon it looked like the sidecar teams were going to have a wet qualifying, but it dried up just in time for them, and with two qualifying sessions, with just less than one hour between them, most teams opted to stay in pit lane between the sessions.
With the problems the Birchall Brothers have had since the beginning of the season on their “Mitchells of Mansfield, LCR, Suzuki, they seemed to have got things sorted as they certainly gave their machine a good try out in the two qualifying sessions. They will start from pole position with a time of 1:42.003. Second to them will be Pekka Paivarinta and Adolf Hanni on the “Team Suzuki Finland” LCR, Suzuki. In the first session they were not as fast as they were bedding in an engine, the engine they had in Croatia had some damage so they changed it, but things went okay, and they set a time of 1:42.880. Third place on the grid will be Jorg Steinhausen and Ashley Hawes on their “Steinhausen Racing” LCR, BMW, with a time of 1:43.818, they did not have such a good qualifying, they were caught in traffic in the second session and it was a couple of laps before they broke free and set their time, also slowing them a little, were some technical issues. A great qualifying for local team, Bennie Streuer and Geert Koerts, “Streuer Racing, LCR Suzuki, they had no problems and set a time of 1:44.940, the fastest the team have been round the Assen circuit. Another team from Finland, Petri Makkula and Timo Karttiala will start from fifth place on the grid on their “Team Makkula” LCR, BMW, with a time of 1:45.623; they took nearly two seconds off their first qualifying time. With a time of 1:47.020 and in sixth place on the grid will be Scott Lawrie and James “Juggy” Neave, on their “Team SLR” LCR, Suzuki, they dropped from fourth in the first session to their present time, but were having tyre problems towards the end of the session. Michael Grabmuller and Manfred Wechelberger on their LCR, Kawasaki will start from seventh on the grid with a time of 1:47.212.
Friday will see a 16 lap race starting at six o’clock local time, and the weather forecast is for 80 percent chance of rain, if so, it will be a very interesting to see who comes out on top.