Ten Kate Honda Silverstone final qualifying report

Heavy traffic keeps Ten Kate Honda off front row

For only the second time this season the Ten Kate Honda team will start a World Supersport race without a rider on the front row of the grid.

Both riders, championship leader Chris Vermeulen and his team mate Karl Muggeridge complained of heavy traffic ruining their fast qualifying laps.

"It's not usual for us to be off the front row," admitted team manager Ronald ten Kate. "I'm not happy that we'll have to start from so far back tomorrow, but at least I know our lads can go quick on race tyres - before the qualifiers started going in we were consistently in the top four. We have some work to do before the race fine tuning our set up and I'm sure we'll be treated to an explosive start to the race."

The riders confirmed ten Kate's view. "The Honda CBR600RR is fast and working really well on both race and qualifying tyres," said Vermeulen. "But as soon as I got my qualifying tyre on I got caught in traffic."

"I had just the same problems, the bike was going good and both Pirelli and WP Suspension had worked really hard to find a set up that could cope with the mix of fast turns and slow, bumpy turns." confirmed Muggeridge. "But when I came around on my fast lap there were about eight riders coming out of the pit lane and I got caught behind them for next few turns."

World Supersport Championship
Round six, Silverstone, 13-14-15 June 2003 <pre> Final Qualifying, best times: 1. J VD Goorbergh NEL Yamaha 1'56.096 2. S Chambon FRA Suzuki 1'56.543 3. K Fujiwara JPN Suzuki 1'56.586 4. S Sanna ITA Yamaha 1'56.622 5. A Corradi ITA Yamaha 1'56.681 6. C Vermeulen AUS Ten Kate Honda 1'56.719 7. R Ulm AUT Honda 1'56.801 8. F Foret FRA Kawasaki 1'56.808 9. P Riba ESP Kawasaki 1'57.037 10. T VD Bosch FRA Yamaha 1'57.073

13. K Muggeridge AUS Ten Kate Honda 1'57.432

-tkh-