APRILIA:

A beautiful sunny day was the backdrop for the Superpole of the French round of the SBK. And it was Ben Spies, on his Yamaha Factory, who captured the Superpole with a time of 1:37:709, just 0:482 ahead of Rea’s Honda and 0:487 ahead of Fabrizio’s Ducati.

It was fourth place for Max Biaggi with a time of 1:38:235, 0:526 behind the pole position. The Roman driver passed the first stage in fourth position with his racing tyres, while in Superpole 2, he finished in fourth place once again after mounting the first qualifying tyre. He used the second qualifying tyre during the last minutes of the final eight, moving into third place, which was then snatched away by Fabrizio, however, who left Biaggi behind by just 39 thousandths of a second.

It was sixteenth place for Leon Camier, who had his Superpole debut with the RSV4. The English driver passed the first stage in thirteenth place with the first qualifying tyre. In Superpole 2, he lost too much time because of a slower driver in front of him and he wasn’t able to get back to the box in time to mount the racing tyre, so he’ll have to make due with a spot in the fourth row.

“It went well, the first row is a good result,” declared Biaggi, “plus, we made some progress with both the suspension and the transmission. As often happens, this year we had to start from zero and so it took a bit more time to get things ready, even though we’re still losing a lot of time at the slowest part of the track where the management of a four-cylinder bike is more difficult. Tomorrow’s race will be very difficult, my competitors are all very fast, but I’ll give it my all, like I always do, and I’m sure that we’ll have a good result.”

“From certain standpoints, it didn’t go very well,” said Camier. “In the Superpole I made some errors in judgment and I wasn’t able to mount the second racing tyre. Everything else is going well, the feeling with the RSV4 is growing and we found a good alignment. I hope I’ll have a good race, even though I know it won’t be easy.”