A taxing day for the Althea Racing team and rider Carlos Checa at the “Autodromo Nazionale di Monza” today; the Spanish rider closed a hard fought Superpole in eleventh position, meaning he will line up on the third row of tomorrow’s starting grid.

In the second qualifying session, which took place this morning on a fairly hot track (34˚C), Carlos was able to make good progress during the 45 minutes available to him. With the harder tyre solution, Althea’s flagbearer was able to lower his best time set yesterday by seven tenths, making his fastest lap in the final seconds of the session. He closed qualifying with the ninth fastest time overall, easily qualifying for the afternoon’s Superpole session.

Superpole 1:

In this first phase Checa went out first with a soft race tyre, managing to record his quickest lap of the weekend thus far (1’43.001). To be sure of safe passage to the next phase he made a second exit with the first of the two qualifying tyres but was unable to improve on this time, concluding this session in twelfth position.

Superpole 2:

With the second qualifier Carlos unfortunately lost precious minutes when he cut the chicane and had his lap time deleted as a result. In the few minutes that were left he did not manage to lower his best time, closing with a best of 1’43.116 that leaves him in eleventh place on tomorrow’s starting grid.


Carlos Checa

""It’s not easy here for us. We know that we are lacking some speed but tomorrow I think that if I can improve through the first sector we can defend ourselves well. Of course it wouldn’t be very realistic to think we can reach the podium but I am confident that we can stay with the front group and we’ll try to take the best possible results. It’s hard to say how we’ll finish but I’ll do my best as always and we’ll see.”

ReSULT (SUPERPOLE):

1. Biaggi (Aprilia) 1’41.7;
2. Laverty (Yamaha) 1’42.3;
3. Rea (Honda) 1’42.6;
4. Corser (BMW) 1’42.6;
5. Melandri (Yamaha) 1’42.7;
6. Haslam (BMW) 1’42.7;
7. Fabrizio (Suzuki) 1’42.9;
8. Haga (Aprilia) 1’43.0...

11. Checa (Ducati) 1’43.1