Provisional Front Row For Troy.

Team Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra rider Troy Corser posted the fourth quickest time of Friday qualifying despite clutch and grip problems. The high temperatures in the afternoon qualifying session caused grip problems for many riders, but series leader Troy Bayliss (Ducati) overcame them to set the day’s fastest lap, with a time of 1:33.387. Second quickest is Brazilian Alex Barros (Honda), with James Toseland (Honda) third. Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra rider Yukio Kagayama also suffered with lack of grip and ended fifth fastest overall. Fabien Foret had problems with his bike set-up and finished twenty-third fastest.

TROY – 4th, 1:33.868
Today, and especially this afternoon, I had some problems with grip and also the clutch. The grip problems may have been to do with the high track temperature in the afternoon (nearly 50 C), but I was just not entirely happy. The inconsistency of the clutch probably caused my little get-off – at Honda corner. The bike’s clutch didn’t seem quite right on the approach to the turn and then the bike just tucked under as I went in. It’s a slow corner and I wasn’t hurt at all, but it’s a bit of a worry if the clutch is going to continue to be inconsistent. It’s a new clutch for this year, but it worked perfectly well in the four day test at Phillip Island earlier in the year, so we are a bit of a loss to understand why it is playing up now. Either way, we will have to solve the problem soon or it will become a nuisance.

YUKIO – 5th, 1:34.461
I also had some grip problems today and I think it was probably because of the heat and also some parts of the track were a bit dirty. The top section of the track was probably worse than the rest, but it is the same situation for all riders, so I must do better. There was quite a bit of traffic out there in qualifying but I did my best lap when I had other riders nearby. I used a very similar setting to when we tested here, but the bike didn’t feel the same at all! For tomorrow we will change the front end set-up and see if we can improve. I tried some different sets of clutches today and found two that worked OK, so I am keeping them for the race on Sunday!

FABIEN – 23rd, 1:35.917
Today was not so good and I am not so happy. I did more or less the same lap times in the afternoon as I did in the morning and of course I should have improved quite a bit! At the moment, I think it is the front end that is giving us problems, so we will look at the data and see what changes should be made. I hope that we find a good solution so that I can improve my lap times a lot – I need to be much higher up the order.

Friday qualifying
1 Bayliss (Aus-Ducati) 1:33.387, 2 Barros (Bra-Honda) 1:33.790, 3 Toseland (GB-Honda) 1:33.851, 4 TROY CORSER (Aus-Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra) 1:33.868, 5 YUKIO KAGAYAMA (J-Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra) 1:34.461, 6 Martin (Aus-Petronas) 1:34.501, 7 Haga (J-Yamaha) 1:34.577, 8 Walker (GB-Kawasaki) 1:34.589, 9 Chili (I-Honda) 1:34.601, 10 Nieto (E-Kawasaki) 1:34.618, 23 FABIEN FORET (F-Alstare Suzuki Corona Extra) 1:35.917,