Jason O’Halloran has qualified on the second row of the grid for tomorrow’s second-round opening race of the day at Brands Hatch, after finishing sixth in today’s British Superbike qualifying on the Indy layout of the spectacular Kent racetrack. His Honda Racing BSB’s team mate Dan Linfoot will launch himself from tenth place after missing Q3 by just 0.015secs.
With sunshine and nearly perfect conditions in the morning’s FP3, both riders were able to lap consistently fast around the 1.2-mile track as they worked hard with their crews to further improve the rear grip of their all-new Honda Fireblade machines and test their pace on longer runs.
The two Honda BSB standard bearers headed confidently into qualifying and, after easing their way into Q2, they entered a very competitive battle for the Q3, which saw the top-10 riders covered by less than three tenths of a second. A tiny but crucial 0.027secs gap separated O’Halloran and Linfoot at the flag, with the latter being bumped out of the top-9 at the very last by a resurgent Leon Haslam.
O’Halloran then went on to claim sixth spot on the grid by logging his personal best lap-time of the weekend in 45.120secs.
Race one will get underway tomorrow at 1:30pm, with the second race set to start at 4:30pm.
We made a big step forward in qualifying and sixth is a good position to start the race from. Obviously being a racer I would have loved to be further up, but it was a positive day nevertheless. The lap-times were so close: I did three 45.1s in a row, which is almost half a second quicker than I have done before at this track. I think we’ve got a good race pace for tomorrow; I feel comfortable, confident and ready to race.
Jason O’Halloran / #22
I’m not really happy with tenth place on the grid. With the new rules concerning tyres during qualifying, after setting my lap-time in Q2 I thought my position was safe enough to make it through, so I decided to wait and save my tyre for the final session. I was hoping nobody would push me out but it happened on the very last lap. Still, I feel good with the bike and I think we’re in for a good race tomorrow
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Dan Linfoot / #4
I’m really happy with the progress the team has made. Both Dan and Jason have made some significant steps forward and I believe both have a great race pace for tomorrow. Unfortunately, Dan has missed out in final qualifying, but if we look at the lap-times, the pace today was very hot. I believe we can get a good start and be at the very sharp end in both races.
Havier Beltran – Honda Racing team manager
