Swan Yamaha’s Tommy Hill narrowly missed out on setting the fastest time in the opening two free practice sessions at Snetterton today ahead of the fourth round of the MCE Insurance British Superbike Championship this weekend in Norfolk.

Hill leads the standings ahead of the two races on Sunday and looked set to end the day fastest but dropped to second in the final seconds. Hill however is feeling confident that with some final setting changes tomorrow he will be ready to challenge for the pole position in qualifying. Noriyuki Haga returned to the 2.99-mile circuit following his podium finish at Oulton Park but the former World Superbike contender was only able to set the 19th fastest time after struggling with feeling. However he is determined that the team will resolve the issue tomorrow ahead of Sunday’s two races.

Hill said:

“We have had two fairly good sessions and we progressed forward in both and made some good changes. The temperature has played a part today, it is the same for everyone, but it does mean we have been trying both tyre options but we are fairly consistent and running good lap times with both. We know which one we will use for qualifying but we will see tomorrow what we will decide on for the race. Tomorrow we aim to be up there again, if not one place higher. We just got pipped by Michael (Laverty) in that session but we knew he would be strong here, but we are fairly happy. We still have more work to do and we want to make a step forward again tomorrow. There is definitely more to come from me and the bike so roll on tomorrow and thanks to everyone at Swan Yamaha.”

Haga said:

“Today we started with the same setting that we used at the pre-season test here and we were able to improve the lap time from then quite quickly. We seemed to have a problem with the feeling of the tyre, but perhaps this is something that was just an issue today. We have been working on the suspension but we haven’t been able to overcome it yet and it hasn’t been too easy today. My team though have a plan for tomorrow and I think we will just have a Ninja setting for tomorrow ready for qualifying!”

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