A more than satisfactory result for Carlos Checa (Althea Racing) in today’s Superpole at the French circuit of Magny-Cours. The Spanish rider will start the final races of the 2012 World Superbike season, taking place tomorrow, in second position. A disappointing outcome for Davide Giugliano on the other hand who will line up in on the fourth row.

In the second qualifying session that took place this morning in dry and sunny conditions, both riders were able to improve on their best times set yesterday. While Checa recorded the second fastest time of the session (1’38.5), Giugliano was able to improve on yesterday’s performance by two tenths to close this morning’s session in eighth position (1’38.7). Once the result of the two qualifying sessions were combined, Carlos lay in third position overall, Davide eighth, with both herefore qualifying without difficulty for this afternoon’s Superpole.

In the final practice session Giugliano and Checa worked with their technicians to make final set-up refinements ahead of the Superpole. Checa lost a lot of time due to a technical problem with his bike. He was only able to make a handful of laps and his technicians had to work hard to resolve the problem in time for the beginning of the Superpole.

Superpole 1 – in this first phase Carlos immediately made one clean lap (1m37.9) which put him in third place, meaning he had no need to make a second exit and progressed easily into the second phase. Giugliano had to make a second exit with a qualifying tyre, and put in two laps. Unfortunately he was unable to make the most of the tyre and closed the session in fifteenth position. Davide will therefore start on the fourth row of tomorrow’s grid.

Superpole 2 – Checa once again made one fast lap, improving on his first-phase performance by another three tenths of a second (1m37.6). Thanks to that time he closed this phase in second position, right behind Sykes.

Superpole 3 – in a repetition of phase 2, Carlos improved once more on his time, lowering it by another couple of tenths to record a best of 1m37.4 He lay in first place until the final seconds when Sykes relegated him to second position. The Althea rider is nevertheless very happy to be able to start tomorrow’s races from the front row.

Carlos Checa:

“I have some great memories of this track last year of course while this year we are saying farewell to the 1198. For this reason I’m really happy to be on the front row, and I hope to be up there with the leaders right through the races. This bike has had a long history, and a successful one, and it would be nice to close this chapter of my career by scoring the best possible results with this bike for the last time. Tomorrow we’ll see what the conditions are like, seeing as they forecast rain overnight tonight, and I’ll push as hard as I can to finish 2012 on a high note.”

Davide Giugliano:

“I’m very disappointed with how today’s Superpole turned out for me. We’d been working really well all weekend and, like I said yesterday, I was feeling confident. Then today the Superpole unfortunately didn’t go as I had hoped and I’ll be starting from the fourth row. I’d hoped to do a lot more to be honest, but I wasn’t able to push as hard as I wanted with the qualifying tyre. Tomorrow will be difficult but I won’t give up.”

TIMES (Superpole):

1. Sykes (Kawasaki) 1’36.9;
2. Checa (Ducati) 1’37.4;
3. Laverty (Aprilia) 1’37.5;
4. Melandri (BMW) 1’37.6;
5. Guintoli (Ducati) 1’37.9;
6. Rea (Honda) 1’38.2;
7. Haslam (BMW) 1’38.2;
8. Davies (Aprilia) 1’38.4

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