Shane Byrne will start from pole position ahead of tomorrow’s race, after a seemingly unreachable lap time saw him shoot to the top spot in the early stage of Q3.
As Q2 rolled to a close, he was sitting in the drop zone until the very last moments. As Jason O’Halloran improved his qualifying time from tenth place, it pushed Byrne back and it was all or nothing on his final flying lap. Luckily for him and the team, he pulled out a lap time that saw him safely progress to the final session at the expense of Josh Brookes.
Peter Hickman almost didn’t make it through to Q3, but a last ditch attempt from the Smiths BMW rider saw him shoot from tenth to the top spot.
As always, Q3 was a five minute frenzy as riders scrabbled to start from the front three rows. Almost as soon as the session was underway, Christian Iddon was seen running his bike down pit lane with a snapped chain. Fortunately, he was able to come back out but he only had time for one flying lap, and will start from ninth in the first race.
Most impressively, Andy Reid made it into the final qualifying session for the first time since he announced his partnership with Tyco BMW. He will start just in front of his team mate Iddon in eighth.
Byrne will start from pole position, ahead of Hickman and Leon Haslam.
MCE British Superbike Datatag Qualifying:
- Shane Byrne (Be Wiser Ducati) 1:26.265s
- Peter Hickman (Smiths Racing BMW) +0.081s
- Leon Haslam (JG Speedfit Kawasaki) +0.115s
- Jake Dixon (RAF Reserves Kawasaki) +0.193s
- Jason O’Halloran (Honda Racing) +0.210s
- Lee Jackson (Smiths Racing BMW) +0.234s
- Dan Linfoot (Honda Racing) +0.422s
- Andy Reid (Tyco BMW) +0.836s
- Christian Iddon (Tyco BMW) +0.883s
