BMW Motorrad: How to Dance psp

After yesterday’s scorchingly hot temperatures, today dawned overcast and dull and when final qualifying began rain showers had soaked the track. Despite little or no information about a wet set-up, Troy and Ruben got into the damp groove superbly and, at the end of the final qualifying session, Troy topped the standings, with Ruben seventh quickest.

But by the time Superpole qualifying started, conditions were once again dry, though the clouds were still casting deep shadows over the 4.226 kilometre circuit. Superpole 1 went well for Troy and he easily qualified for Superpole 2, but a clutch problem prevented him from lapping quickly enough to get into Superpole 3 and any chance of getting on the first two rows of the grid were gone. Ruben ended Superpole with the 18th fastest lap and will start from fifth row of the grid behind Troy on row four. Jakub Smrz (Ducati) took Superpole, with a time of 1:35.435, with Jonathan Rea (Honda) second, Ben Spies (Yamaha) third and Michel Fabrizio (Ducati) fourth.

Troy – 15th, 1:36.994
If it hadn’t been for the clutch problem, I think I could have got into Superpole 3 and that would have meant a start on the first two rows of the grid. It’s just unfortunate that the problem happened because we were so close to getting our best Superpole result so far, but that’s racing. But the good news is that I’m pretty happy with how the bike is working and how it’s handling the bumps here. I think we’ve got reasonably good set-ups for both dry and wet races, though I guess most of us would prefer it to be dry tomorrow.

Ruben – 18th, 1:37.300
Normal practice and qualifying has been good and the bike is working better here than it was in USA and it shows we are making progress. The only thing that let us down today was Superpole and we are just not experienced enough with the qualifying tyres to find really good set-ups for this particular situation. On race tyres, I am happy and I think we are pretty close to the pace. It is a shame that we were not able to test qualifying tyres in the winter tests because that would have given us some experience about what to do during a race weekend, but that’s the way it is. My grid place is a bit of a nightmare and I need to get a couple of good starts and not get held up in the early part of the race if I am to get good results.

Berti Hauser (BMW Motorrad Motorsport Director)
Considering the difficult conditions in regular qualifying this morning, Troy did fantastically well to top of the standings, with Ruben in the top seven. It shows that, despite a lack of wet weather information, we were able to be on the pace in these conditions. Troy was unlucky with his clutch problem in Superpole. We suffered once again from a lack of experience with qualifying tyres, as it seems that our bike needs a very different set-up to when it is on regular race rubber. We were so close to the first two rows of the grid today, but I am sure that it will not be long before we manage it.Captain Blood hd