Qualifying, 2d practice
World Supersport Championship
Round 7
Aragon 29 june-1 July 2012
SATURDAY JUNE 30.TH
Little by little things are going better. We finished yesterday’s qualifying with Vladimir Leonov riding in 2’06”, and started this morning free practice doing immediately 2’04”741. Yes, Vladimir is fighting with the pain, but every lap he does, the feeling with the bike is caming back. He has big difficoulties in this lefthand circuit, especially in the fast part, but soffering and sacrificing he stay there, and push as much as possibile.
He immediately liked the new engine, and what we saw in top speed confirmed that the step is important. This morning only 6 bikes was faster (1-2 km/h) than our R6, and this gived a little hep to vladimir to conquer the 17.th position in laptime.
But in the afternoon the terrible hot weather went back on the circuit, and the high temperature is the worst condition for our injured rider to recover the right condition.
With the left leg in this condition he cannot do more than 2-3 fast lap in a row, and the first run he had lot of traffic so he couldn’t do a good timing.
The same happened in the second run, with the new rear tire, but in any case he had a good 2’04”622, using the tyre that probably we will use tomorrow for the race.
Then when we putted the “laptime” tyre, he went out already without the right energy in the leg, and even he had traffic in the fastest lap, when he was doing better about half a second... So, no way to improve from 2’04”622, and Yakhnich Motorsport R6 will start from the 20.th position.
Now the question is: how many laps Vladimir can do tomorrow in the race before soffering too much and being obliged to slow down or to stop? It doesn’t matter! We know that this race must be considered only a “welcome back” race for Vladimir, hoping that it will help him to be in better conditions for next stages.
VLADIMIR LEONOV
“This morning immediately I liked the new engine. Now when I open the gas the response at the throttle is much better, and this helps me a little in this difficult days. For sure I cannot push in many corners, I continue to loose meters and meters when I have to change gear in the left corners, but I will never give up!”.