Eighth for Lowes and Voltcom Crescent Suzuki in Laguna Seca Superpole

Voltcom Crescent Suzuki’s Alex Lowes qualified in eighth place after a dramatic Laguna Seca World Superbike Superpole in the USA this afternoon.

Continuing to improve his Yoshimura-powered GSX-R as the American weekend progressed, Lowes was denied his initial qualifying lap after an on-track incident – resulting in his 1.23.285 time being set on third-lap rubber. However, confident of the developments made so far, the British racer is looking forward to tomorrow’s two 25-lap races.

Randy de Puniet’s bright start to the weekend continued in the opening sessions this morning, with further refinements made to his Suzuki Superbike. Despite missing out on the automatic top-ten qualification in the final timed practice, the Frenchman’s pace in FP4 looked to be on his best form of the season, before a crash at turn 10 cut short his session with 20 minutes remaining. Reverting to the spare bike for the afternoon’s qualifying, his continued improvement was stalled, leaving him in 17th position – and on the sixth row – for Sunday’s battles.

Similar conditions to Friday saw a cloudy start give way to Californian sunshine as the Monterey track warmed to 43°C for the Superpole shootout, allowing Ducati’s Chaz Davies to secure his debut WSBK pole position with a time of 1’22.101.

Lowes and de Puniet will be back on their respective Voltcom Crescent Suzuki GSX-R1000’s at 11:30hrs and 14:30hrs local time (19:30 and 22:20BST) for Sunday’s two races.

Alex Lowes:

“I did my best as always today but we’re not quite where I wanted to be. My aim was for the first two rows. We are still looking for that extra element to try to give us a little more confidence with turning-in on the bike and hopefully if we can find that in warm up, our race-pace will come a little easier and we can have two good races tomorrow. The lads did a good job, working methodically and although we started off on the wrong foot this weekend we’ve managed to build back up well. We’ve done the best we could with what we’ve had, unfortunately we weren’t quite fast enough today but we’ll try again tomorrow!”

Alex Lowes During Superpole

Randy de Puniet:

“I am very disappointed because today could have been good. This morning we tried some adjustments, in a good way but unfortunately I was just out of the top ten. During FP4 I was on a very good lap, faster than my best all weekend, but I crashed on the last right corner before the end and demolished the bike. The guys had to prepare the second bike but I haven’t ridden this one since Assen and unfortunately the feeling was not the same as my original bike. We tried to make the adjustments, which was better but not enough, so I am starting 17th. I am really disappointed because I’m pretty sure I was able to go into SP2 and do a good time. Now I hope we can fix the bike to replicate the same feeling from before the crash and if we can do that I think we can have a good race. I know the guys have a lot of work now and I’m sorry for that. The pace is there so now we just need to find the feeling again so we can have two good races tomorrow.”

Paul Denning – Team Manager:

“Qualifying day at Laguna Seca has gone in two opposite directions for the riders. Alex has continued to make improvements with the bike which has helped him under braking and improved his rhythm on the race tyres by a good step In Superpole itself, Alex just missed out on a second row start – which wasn’t helped by an on-track altercation meaning he had to set his qualifying time on the third lap of the tyre, which is never ideal but he made a great job to dig in. The top factory-bike competitors are a little bit of a step ahead but a lot can happen over race distance here at Laguna and we hope Alex can be in the fight for a good position.

“Randy improved yesterday’s time in FP3, just missing out on the top ten, but we were still very positive for a top ten qualifying and his best start position of the year. He was pushing really, really hard behind pole-sitter Davies in FP4 and was on a great lap but the crash destroyed his race bike and we were forced to revert to the spare machine for qualifying. As often is the case, the untested spare bike didn’t feel the same and Randy struggled to make a representative lap time in Superpole. We will make sure the GSX-R is as good as it can be for tomorrow and hope that Randy can still have his best race day of the year so far.”

Laguna Seca – eni FIM Superbike World Championship – Superpole:

1. Chaz Davies (Ducati) 1’22.101: 2. Davide Giugliano (Ducati) +0.196: 3. Jordi Torres (Aprilia) +0.313: 4. Tom Sykes (Kawasaki) +0.425: 5. Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki) +0.753: 8. ALEX LOWES (VOLTCOM CRESCENT SUZUKI) +1.184: 17. RANDY DE PUNIET (VOLTCOM CRESCENT SUZUKI) SP1

Source: Eighth for Lowes and Voltcom Crescent Suzuki in Laguna Seca Superpole