PROGRESS FOR HONDA RACING’S DUO AT KNOCKHILL

Honda Racing’s duo Dan Linfoot and Jason O’Halloran have been making progress at the fourth round of the MCE British Superbike Championship at Knockhill in Scotland, aboard the all-new Fireblade, during free practice sessions and today’s qualifying.

In a change to normal proceedings, today’s qualifying took place over one 30-minute session, due to track contamination from a previous class, which saw a ten minute practice kick off the session. Both Linfoot and O’Halloran have enjoyed solid practices and have not been outside the top-ten all weekend.

Yesterday’s practice runs were disrupted with red flag incidents and saw both Honda-men pushing and in the mix throughout, with O’Halloran topping the timesheets in FP1.

With qualifying times close at the Scottish circuit, the top-16 were split by just 0.6 seconds as the chequered flag fell. The O’Show will start tomorrow’s 30-lap race from the second row of the grid in fifth place, with team-mate Linfoot on the fourth row in 10th position.

Race one gets underway tomorrow (Sunday 18 June) at 1330, with race two scheduled for 1630.

We had free practice this morning and we used it to try a few different settings and I felt we came up with something good and went into qualifying with those settings. Unfortunately the track conditions weren’t great for this afternoon and there was a lot of oil and concrete dust out there, so the session was delayed for quite a while. The series organisers and the Knockhill staff did a great job to get us out there considering. We had a free practice session before and then a 30-minute qualifying, but it’s tough to keep your focus when you normally have three sessions to then have one long session; it’s just a bit of a different strategy. We did the best we could and ended up fifth, so I’ll start tomorrow on the second row, which I am happy with. We have a few things to try tomorrow morning in warm up ahead of race one, but I feel we’ll have strong race pace and can push for a few podiums.

Jason O’Halloran / #22

I’m feeling pretty average after qualifying, I thought I was going to have a better session than I did after the free practices, so I’m not massively happy. I felt good after FP3 and managed to finish P5, so I felt happy and was ready to go into qualifying. During the session with the cement dust I just didn’t feel that I had the same feeling I’d had before, I know it would have been the same for everyone, but I felt like I had some of my confidence taken away. I felt really strong in practice, but not so much in qualifying, we’ll take a look at things now and maybe try something different for warm up.

Dan Linfoot / #4It’s been a tough weekend so far for everyone really in terms of consistency and getting in laps without stops; Friday’s sessions were disrupted with red flags and it has been tough to get any rhythm together as something seems to happen. I’m really pleased with both Dan and Jason, they have made progress, although qualifying doesn’t really reflect on how much progress they have both made. Dan dropped back to tenth during the session and Jason secured the fifth fastest time, so we have a good starting place for them both and over the weekend they haven’t left the top-ten. So I’m hoping for good weather tomorrow and a good start from them both and I feel we can get two good races under our belts.Havier Beltran – Honda Racing team manager

Qualifying