The BMW Motorrad France 99 confirms its pole position. After the fantastic laptimes clocked yesterday by Erwan Nigon and Sébastien Gimbert, the official BMW team has put the hammer down once again. Damian Cudlin improved his laptimes this morning and gave the BMW 99 a definitive pole position despite the progress of the other competitors.
A second machine on Michelin, the Monster Yamaha YART, is in second place on the starting grid. On that bike too, Igor Jerman and Steve Martin did their best laptimes yesterday. Today, Loris Baz, the newcomer on the official Austrian Yamaha, managed to give its full potential and signed a great 1'37.514, second
best time of the sessions.
The team SRC Kawasaki, with Julien da Costa, Gregory Leblanc and Olivier Four, also made the most of the second qualifying session. After a loss of time as they suffered a crash yesterday morning during the free practice, the SRC Kawasaki moved up this morning to a third place on the grid ahead of the Yamaha Racing France GMT 94 Ipone of David Checa, Kenny Foray and Matthieu Lagrive. The Suzuki Endurance Racing Team takes the fifth place on the grid with Anthony Delhalle, Daisaku Sakai and Baptiste Guittet, who improved his laps by half a second between the two sessions.
BMW is also leading the Superstock class. The team Van Zon Boenig Motorsportschool Penz13 RT took the best this morning ahead of the Junior Team Suzuki LMS and the Team Motor Events Bodyguard AMT, although these two last teams suffered some crashes this morning. Highly disputed, this second qualifying session has been quite dramatic, with many riders running out of the track and several teams experiencing some engine breakdowns, leading the session to be interrupted for some time.
The race start is scheduled tomorrow Saturday at 3 pm, after the very last set-ups to be confirmed with the warm-up at 10:30 am.
Follow the race live on www.fim-tv.com and on Motors TV from Saturday, 2:30 pm. To follow all the practices and race results live, log onto www.fim-live.com
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