A new owner of the town
SUPERSPORT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
PHILLIP ISLAND-Australia
1 Stage, 22-24 February - Friday
First day of the weekend in Phillip Island brought a lot of positive emotions to Yakhnich Motorsport team – Sam Lowes continued to dominate, he took the lead for more than 1 second and made a claim to the pole position on the first round of racing season 2013.
Russian team started the day in a great shape. On FP1 both riders – Sam Lowes and Vladimir Leonov – took up strong positions in TOP-5. Sam Lowes also headed the rating (1:33:2) and left no chance to immediate rival Kenan Sofuoglu - current World Supersport champion (Mahi Racing Kawasaki) and his teammate Fabien Foret. Both Russian riders planned long passages for approving bikes’ settings for oncoming race.
But FP1 was broken off with red flags because of lots of crashes. A lot of riders fell down including Leonov.
The accident was at time when Vladimir started to try his bike after changing tyres and getting out from pit-lane. He was prepared for the final racing simulation. Leonov crashed on 11th turn. Possible reason - oil spill. Bike was seriously injured and unfortunately there was not enough time between sessions for assembling R6 before the start of qualification. Vladimir didn’t escape injury but decided to skip qualification for recovering. He will be on track on Saturday morning.
Because of crashes on 11th turn a lot of riders suffered damages. David Salom was taken to the hospital for examination, Luca Scassa had problems with right hand, Michael Van der Mark also had to go into Medical Center for a check.
Despite this Yakhnich Motorsport team is satisfied. Sam Lowes raised the ante in speed on Phillip Island. He could reach 1:32 and finished this day with absolute record of Supersport class - 1:32.545. Sofuoglu droped behind Lowes to 1.119 sec. Third place took Roberto Rolfo from ParkinGo team which now rides on MV Agusta. The fourth and fifth places in QP1took Michael Van der Mark (Pata Honda WSS) and Jack Kennedy (Rivamoto) who came from Europe Cup STK-600.
After qualification Race Directorate decided to reduce the number of laps on Sunday to 15. This information inspired Yakhnich Motorsport team as the only team who had long simulations (around 20 laps). Sam Lowes demonstrated stability of results. Today he had 12 laps running, 11 of them he kept within 1:33.
Sam Lowes: “I am glad to improve results on this bike. Me made some changes in settings and here I am. I know that I didn’t have to make the most of the bike but it turned out to ride quickly. I think I can quicken on few tenth seconds for one fast lap.”
Vladimir Leonov: “I don’t know what happened exactly. Getting out of the turn I started to quicken, suddenly back wheel went away – flying! Of course, there was oil spill. It’s huge disappointment because we have just assembled an excellent bike. And now it was seriously injured. I hope we could restore the bike. Team has a chance to start the season on a high note.”
