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Arai duo working steadily in Moscow

Arai duo working steadily in Moscow

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Jonathan Rea and Leon Haslam are both relatively satisfied after the opening qualifying session for the eighth round World Superbike championship event at Moscow Raceway in Russia today.

The British pairing finished in seventh and 12th places respectively in this afternoon’s 45-minute session while series leader Tom Sykes set the pace with provisional pole position.

Lap times are close, however, with 26-year-old Rea just half a second behind Sykes and Haslam, 30, a further 0.5s back. Both Honda CBR1000RR riders are confident of improvements in their settings for tomorrow morning’s second qualifying session before the afternoon Superpole sessions to determine final grid positions for both Sunday’s races.

Jonathan Rea – P7 1m36.084s

It’s not been a bad day although we got off to a sluggish start this morning, setting up a base map for the electronics, but the guys worked pretty well to get it in the ball park. We’re there or thereabouts and we didn’t use a lot of tyres today, trying to focus more on what’s happening when the tyre gets old. I tried a different front today, which I liked, but I had some positives and some negatives. Tomorrow we need to work on the exit on to the back straight where we’re a little weak so we’re looking at different options. Maybe gearbox ratios will make things a little better there. Otherwise, it’s half a second to the front, but it took us a while to wake up this morning. We’ll all sit down together to discuss options and come back strong in the morning.

Leon Haslam – P12 1m36.585s 

We had a few little niggles this morning and managed to rectify the bulk of them this afternoon. There was a bit of an issue with the new tyre but we kept with it and the times came good again. So, we just need to look at a bit of a set-up for the newer tyre, but on old rubber the bike was pretty good. There are only really two options for the rear and we’ve tried them both now. They both look good for the race so it’s a question of what we do with set-up and electronics to see which is the better option.

Pieter Breddels – technical co-ordinator

We were a little behind in the morning session and had to make some adjustments, but we recovered quite well and made some progress this afternoon. We didn’t really go for a lap time in that qualifying session and didn’t use new tyres. Also, the ideal times look better so we’re not too concerned. It’s all quite close at the top so it should be an interesting day tomorrow.

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