Jonathan Rea set the fastest ever Superbike lap at Portimao in Portugal this afternoon to take pole position for tomorrow’s final two races of the 2011 World Superbike Championship.

The Castrol Honda rider lapped the 4.592km Portimao circuit in a time of 1m41.712s, eclipsing by three tenths of a second the previous best lap set by Cal Crutchlow last season.

Rea has been in scintillating form all weekend for the final SBK round of 2011 and was fastest in this morning’s second regulation qualifying session. But the 24-year-old from Northern Ireland saved his best lap for this afternoon’s final Superpole session to take his second consecutive pole position.

Rea will be joined on the front row for tomorrow’s two 22-lap races by newly crowned World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa, who was second fastest today, ahead of Eugene Laverty and Marco Melandri, who round out the front row.

Karl Muggeridge, replacing the injured Ruben Xaus, made further progress today as he continued to re-familiarise himself with the Portimao circuit and his CBR1000RR. The 37-year-old Australian was 19th fastest today for fifth row qualifying slot.

Jonathan Rea – P1 1m41.712s

To be honest, I’d much rather swap this pole position and the one at Magny-Cours for two good results tomorrow, but I’m still very happy with today. I’m enjoying riding the bike so much right now and go out with a smile on my face in every session. We had quite a different strategy with tyres today but it looks like being quite a difficult race with the temperatures here and we think the race will probably start around lap ten. For now though, we’ll just savour the moment and I’ll try my best tomorrow, which is another day after all.

Karl Muggeridge – P19 1m45.268s

It’s still a big job for me to get to grips with the bike and the tyres here. We made some progress today but it’s going to be tough to muscle the bike around here tomorrow. I don’t really have enough confidence yet in the bike so we’ll just have to work a little more tonight to bring that on. It’s still difficult to accelerate out of the corners properly but the entry has improved a lot, which is where I struggled big-time yesterday. I just need to work on getting off them now but it’s all right and we’ll keep chipping away tomorrow.

Ronald ten Kate – team manager

That was quite a special lap. We knew that Jonathan had quite a good pace around here but we were not actually expecting to see a 41s lap on display. So big compliments to him – it was a great job, but more importantly race pace seems to be quite OK, so we’re looking forward to tomorrow. Karl is improving lap by lap so we hope tomorrow, with some more laps under his belt, that he can collect some points and enjoy his weekend with us.


Pole position : 1m42.712s (162.712Km/h) Jonathan Rea, Honda, 2011
Circuit record lap : 1m42.774s (160,850Km/h) Max Biaggi (Aprilia, 2010)
Circuit Best Lap : 1m42.712s (162.712Km/h) Jonathan Rea, Honda, 2011

.