Kyle Smith will start tomorrow’s eighth round World Supersport championship race from the fourth row of the grid after setting the 11th-fastest time in this afternoon’s qualifying session at the Misano World Circuit in Italy.
The 22-year-old Pata Honda rider has been setting impressive times in all three free practice sessions going into today’s final shoot-out for grid positions for tomorrow’s 19-lap race at the 4.226km Misano circuit.
However, a crash early in the 45-minute session left Smith languishing in his team’s pitbox waiting for his Honda CBR600RR to return for repairs. Unfortunately, it finally came back with just nine minutes of the session remaining and his team realized that it would take longer to fix than the time available.
Smith and his crew are confident that the race pace he has displayed in free practice at Misano can be enough to have him fighting near the front but a good start will certainly be required to make progress.
Kyle Smith - P11, 1m39.480s
I’m really disappointed because I felt like I could do well in qualifying but I think I just went out too eager and crashed. It was right at the beginning of the session and I think I could have pushed it back to the box in the time it took to get back, but they wouldn’t let me. The result was that I couldn’t get back out and only did four or five laps at the beginning of qualifying which left me in P11. We did a race simulation in the earlier Free Practice 3 and the CBR felt really good. I think that the confidence it gave me was part of the problem in going out too eager in qualifying, but I’ll try to get a decent start tomorrow and see what I can do from there.
Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator
It didn’t really go as planned today because Kyle crashed in the very first run in qualifying. This was a problem because one of the clip-ons broke and he couldn’t return his CBR to the pits. When it finally got back there was less than 10 minutes to go which was not enough time to get the bike ready again. There was nothing left to do but sit this one out and, in the end, his earlier time was good for 11th. He has a job to do tomorrow but his race pace is quite OK so I think that, with a good start in the race, a top five position is still possible.
Weather
Sunny Intervals
Air
25°C
Track
48°C
Humidity
61%
Qualifying Results
1 Jules Cluzel 1m37.482s FRA MV MV Agusta Reparto Corse
2 Kenan Sofuoglu 1m37.955s TUR KAWASAKI Kawasaki Puccetti Racing
3 Patrick Jacobson 1m38.066s USA HONDA CORE Motorsport Thailand
4 Lorenzo Zanetti 1m38.658s ITA MV MV Agusta Reparto Corse
5 Gino Rea 1m38.856s GBR HONDA CIA Landlords Insurance Honda
6 Fabio Menghi 1m38.965s ITA YAMAHA VFT Racing
7 Alex Baldolini 1m39.116s ITA MV Race Department ATK#25
8 Roberto Rolfo 1m39.201s ITA HONDA Team Lorini
9 Christian Gamarino 1m39.412s ITA KAWASAKI Team GO Eleven
10 Kevin Wahr 1m39.480s GER HONDA SMS Racing
11 Kyle Smith 1m39.480s GBR HONDA Pata Honda World Supersport Team