Tyco Suzuki’s John Hopkins will start tomorrow’s British Superbike Championship 10th round at Assen in the Netherlands from the front-row of the grid after qualifying in second place.
Hopkins waited patiently and maturely during a wet and tricky Q3 session to take a front-row grid spot; his second successive BSB race-one front-row after qualifying on Pole at Donington Park a fortnight ago. And, with a confidence-inspiring set-up for both wet-and-dry conditions, ‘Hopper’ is confident of completing what he started this weekend on the team’s GSX-R1000 Superbike.
John Hopkins:
“Assen is fast and flowing and all about having confidence in your machine. I’m hoping we can take this qualifying through to race-day and turn it into results, which we couldn’t quite do at Donington Park. I had my one and only MotoGP pole position here at Assen, so I have some good memories of the place. My Tyco Suzuki is working really well here wet-or-dry so hopefully, yeah; we can turn today into some decent results on Sunday.”
His team-mate Josh Waters, who is making his Assen debut, got caught-out by the rain during Q2 when on a personal best-lap, but is confident he can improve his race two start position after qualifying in 13th for tomorrow’s opening race at Assen.
Josh Waters:
“Overall we’ve done a decent job and although I would have liked to have made Q3, I’m confident that we can push in race one and get a good result. I’ve been making that top-six for a few meetings now and we’ve found solid consistency, so anything less on Sunday on the Tyco Suzuki GSX-R1000 and I’ll be disappointed.”
Taylor Mackenzie also had to deal with a wet but drying track during Saturday’s British Supersport Sprint race and eventually finished 12th after fighting top-six in the early exchanges.
Philip Neill – Team Manager:
“We are all very impressed with John’s achievements today in difficult conditions, especially having sat-out the early part of the session to avoid a potential disaster – then to go out and bang in a front-row qualifying time in Q3. He had the dry set-up to go front-row and possibly Pole on the Tyco Suzuki GSX-R1000 here at Assen, and we already know as a team, we have worked hard to perfect our wet set-up, so again we are hopeful of something deserved tomorrow in whatever conditions.”
British Superbike Championship, Assen, Datatag Extreme Qualifying:
1. Christian Iddon (Bimota) 1m:52.261s
2. John Hopkins (Tyco Suzuki) +0.131s
3. Tommy Bridewell (Yamaha) +0.411s
4. Ryuichi Kiyonari (BMW) +0.517s
5. Dan Linfoot (Kawasaki) +0.607s
6. Josh Brookes (Yamaha) +0.965s
7. Jon Kirkham (Kawasaki) +1.447s
8. Chris Walker (Kawasaki) +1.575s
9. Martin Jessopp (BMW) +4.436s
10. Peter Hickman (Honda) +5.185s
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via Suzuki
