SUNSHINE AT SNETTERTON FOR FRIDAY PRACTICE
Round 5 of the Bennetts British Superbike championship got
underway at Snetterton today. Both Airwaves Ducati riders
performed well, with Gregorio Lavilla achieving two 4th place
finishes and Leon Haslam a 6th and a 3rd.
In the first of the two 50 minute sessions Greg took an early
lead with a time of 1:06.200. Having had his time bettered
Greg dropped to 2nd before a red flag halted the session.
Following the interruption, Greg continued to post consistent
times before recording his best time of the morning, 1:06.094
on lap 22 of 29. This resulted in a 4th place finish. Leon’s
times were sporadic during the first 20 minutes but got significantly
faster towards the end. He set his fastest time of 1:06.499
on the final lap of practice putting him in 6th place.
Greg took the lead again at the start of second practice
with a time of 1:05.777. The speed of the Honda’s on
the straights then started to show, and Greg was pushed down
into 3rd with 25 minutes of the session remaining. Leon lapped
consistently throughout the second half of practice, recording
his fastest time of the day and his first under 1 minute 06
seconds, on lap 32 of 36. His time of 1:05.695 resulted in
a 3rd place finish. Greg’s set his best time of 1:05.711
on his penultimate lap of the session, to finish just behind
his team mate in 4th.
After practice Leon said, “I am much happier this afternoon
than this morning as I had some front suspension problems;
it was nothing major but it meant I did not lap as fast as
I had wanted to in first practice. On the whole it has been
a good day but I am looking forward to tomorrow when I am
hoping that I can get back to the kind of times I was doing
last year.”
Greg commented on the wind at the very flat Norfolk circuit,
saying, “The day has gone well, this morning was good
but as with Leon I felt much better this afternoon. As I have
said before, it is a difficult circuit for us but I am pleased
with how we have gone today, as we were running consistently
fast. We have always known that the 4 cylinder bikes would
be competitive here and that showed today, but it has also
been really windy which has affected me too. The wind changed
direction from this morning to this afternoon and that caused
me to have a few big moments as my breaking distances changed
a lot from the first to the second session. I think we can
take confidence from today’s performance but we will
need to see what the weather does tomorrow, as that will play
a big part in the qualifying results.”
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