World Supersport Championship
Round 9
Brno 20-22 July 2012
FRIDAY JULY 20.TH
A quite renewed Vladimir attempt at the 8.th stage of WSS. After the terrible accident in Donington, and after the big difficoulties he had in Aragon to ride properly due to the injuers, other two week of rest gived him to possibilities to recover most of his energies.
With one training in Misano he discovered last monday that now he can be back to ride properly, and here in Brno we saw it from the first friday free practice. The rithm he could ride the Yakhnich Yamaha R6 was immediatly high, so high to be stable in the first 10 and to finish the session in a very good sixt position, in 2’05”423, just one second from the leader, Lowes.
So the team feeling for the afternoon qualifying was very good, and the beginning of the session confirmed this impression. Again, the Yakhnich R6 was stable in the first 6-7 positions for the first 15 minutes, while Leonov was riding ant testing with the hard tyres we will use in the race.
Then when we putted the soft tyre for the laptime attempt, some problem started. Lot of chattering in the front, obliged Leonov to stop twice at box, loosing the critical minutes of the end of the session, while all other riders was using the soft tyre and improved thier position, pushing Vladimir and his 2’05”206 to the 13.th position. At least we decided to came back to the hard tyre in the front, and it was the right decision, but unfortunatly no more time for Leonov to realize his fast lap, as crossing the finish line at the end of the session he saw the race director near the line with the checkered flag in his hand... he understood the session was finished. In reality he could have done one lap more, the race director was waiting his passage before expose the flag, but this procedure disturbed our rider, and to avoid any penalties Vladimir decided to stop.
It doesn’t matter... OK, we could have been qualified at least in second row (this is what we can see from the overall riders rithm, but we are sure we can improve on saturday qualifying, if the rain will not disturb it...
VLADIMIR LEONOV
“I was sure we could be in the first two rows. I’m not at 100%, but I felle better and better every day. Now my probnlem is only in few left corners, where I cannot push with the leg as I would like, but now is much better than the last race. The bike is Ok, I feel we can d a very good race on sunday...”.