The Team Green Kawasaki squad of Jonathan Rea, Leon Haslam and Kazuma Watanabe stormed to pole position during an amended top ten shoot out qualifying on Saturday 28 July for the 41st Suzuka 8Hr Endurance race.

Overnight and early morning rain did nothing to dampen the spirits of the Ninja ZX-10RR riders after the scintillating qualifying performance on Friday where Jonathan Rea set a new best lap time for the Suzuka event.  With the threat of a typhoon coming to the region, the normal top ten qualifying shoot out was amended to allow the teams to field all their riders over a 40 minute period.

Team Green rider Watanabe elected to sit out the session which meant that Rea and Haslam could use the full allocation of four special qualifying tyres between them.

With the track completely dry, Haslam set a benchmark in the first half of the session with a 2m 05.90 lap time.  Jonathan Rea then took over and whilst he did not match his lap time from yesterday, his fastest effort of 2m 05.403 was sufficient to claim pole position for tomorrow’s 8Hr race which is scheduled to start at 11:30am local time.


Haslam: Big team effort

“So far it’s been good – the feeling with the bike and all three riders was really good. I am really happy with pole position The last two years we’ve been second and the lap we managed was still a pole lap. I knew Johnny had a bit in the bank for me after the amazing lap he did yesterday so I was a little bit nervous doing my lap.

I did not want to throw it away because I knew we had a lot of potential. Again big team effort really happy but we’ve got to wait and see what the weather does. I feel we’ve prepared the best we can and I’m feeling pretty good”
 
Rea: Nice to be pole position

“Very happy with today and the lap time. It’s nice to be pole position for tomorrow to give us the best opportunity to get a good start and get some clear road at the beginning. Leon did a great job on his qualifying tyre so the strategy was that he was going to go first to kinda’ took a bit of pressure off me. Also big thanks to Kazuma because we had four soft tyres for the superpole session and he elected to give us both two tyres each. So a huge team effort and I feel ready for the race tomorrow.

I have not done so many laps this weekend and no kind of race simulation but it meant the test a few weeks ago was very beneficial. We line up excited but also nervous because it’s a long race anything can happen and to make things even more interesting there’s a typhoon on its way over now. We have to wake up and then come what may”.

Watanabe: Looking forward

I am very happy because Johnny and Leon made so many good lap times. I am very looking forward to tomorrow’s race because we can start in pole position and I want to say thank you again to Johnny and Leon”.