Silverstone: FPR first qualifying notes

Qualified progress for FPR at Silverstone

Foggy PETRONAS Racing riders Troy Corser and Chris Walker made progress during the first qualifying session of the sixth round of the Superbike World Championship at Silverstone today.

After a stuttering start to the day's proceedings, Troy improved his morning time by more than two seconds in finishing tenth fastest while Chris also went 1.5 seconds quicker during afternoon qualifying, with Frankie Chili setting the pace of 1:55.043.

Chris was also forced to make a swift dismount of the FP1 during morning practice when a fuel system problem caused the bike to burst into flames, stopping the session for 20 minutes as marshals extinguished the blaze. Set-up work was therefore focused on his second bike only and Chris has the luxury of not having used any of his qualifying tyre allocation before tomorrow's jostling for grid positions.

Troy said: "Although I ended up in tenth I am reasonably happy because I know I can go quicker tomorrow. I reckon I could have been sixth had I not made a couple of mistakes on my lap on the qualifier. Even so I managed to set the best split for the third sector and I was going just as quickly on race tyres without as much effort. We changed the internal gearbox from the morning and that was an improvement. But it's still frustrating because I followed Haga round for a lap and was quicker than him through every single corner yet he just pulled away down the straight. My back is aching a little bit but it is not worrying me while I am on the bike as I'm not thinking about it."

Chris said: "I have been struggling for feel between the throttle connection and grip, and also with tyre chatter. So it has felt a bit wooden. And it hasn't helped that I have only had one bike in action for most of the day after the fire this morning. I guess the positive thing is that I went two seconds faster in the afternoon. I am still 1.5 seconds away from the leaders but I didn't use a qualifier, so it's not the end of the world."

-fpr-