Cadwell Park BSB: Leon Camier takes pole

As expected, Leon Camier took pole position for Monday’s British Superbike round at Cadwell Park with another imperious performance in this afternoon’s ‘Roll for Pole’ qualifying.

Having dominated every free practice session, the Championship leader was the only rider to lap below 1m28s and although he didn’t quite lap as quick as what he had done on Sunday morning, his time of 1m27.397s saw him over six tenths of a second clear of his nearest challenger.

Second place on the grid went to John Laverty on the Buildbase Kawasaki and although somewhat of a surprise to see the Ulsterman so far up, he has been knocking on the door in recent weeks and has posted some fine top six results so he’s certainly there on merit.

Making it a great day for Kawasaki, Simon Andrews took third on the sister MSS Colchester Kawasaki machine and, as before, second placed downwards saw some extremely close times with the next few places separated by just hundredths of a second.

Stuart Easton will lead the second row (Cadwell has a 3×3 formation due to the narrowness of the circuit) on the first of the Hydrex Honda’s with Karl Harris two places further back in sixth.

Ian Lowry is the filling in the sandwich on his Relentless Suzuki continuing the strong form he has shown throughout the weekend.

Sylvain Guintoli’s comeback continued in seventh and whilst maybe not happy with seventh and the third row, the Frenchman will no doubt be delighted by the fact that he’s just two tenths of a second off second place.

James Ellison will have been disappointed to have ended up eighth as his time in Q2 was the second fastest overall whilst Julien da Costa and Chris Walker rounded out the top ten, the last named finally showing some decent pace having languished down in the teens during free practice.

John McGuinness was the unlucky rider to miss out in 11th as he came agonisingly short of making it inside the top ten, the HM Plant Honda rider just 0.07s adrift of Julien da Costa at the end of Q2.

He fared better than Karl Muggeridge though, the Australian seeing his hopes of making it into the final part of qualifying hampered when he crashed out of Q1 at Barn Corner with just 5 minutes to go.

He made it back to the pits in time for Q2 and jumped on his spare bike but ultimately fell short of the top ten and so will line up in 13th on the grid.

Another faller in Q1 was Graeme Gowland on the second Motorpoint/Henderson Yamaha. Having shone in the morning’s free practice session, he went down on the exit of Charlie’s and although the bike was returned to the pits the damage was too extensive to be repaired in time.

Gowland banged his leg in the fall but was otherwise unscathed although 20th was certainly not what he deserved.

There was further confusion in the Yamaha garage when team-mate Jon Kirkham took to the circuit with the bodywork of Gowland’s machine fixed to his own R1, complete with Gowland’s number 8. He was pulled back into pitlane after a couple of laps and instructed to carry his own number 44, as per the rules.

Times
1 Leon Camier (Airwaves Yamaha) 1m27.397s
2 John Laverty (Buildbase Kawasaki) 1m28.069s
3 Simon Andrews (MSS Colchester Kawasaki) 1m28.112s
4 Stuart Easton (Hydrex Honda) 1m28.177s
5 Ian Lowry (Relentless by TAS Suzuki) 1m28.193s
6 Karl Harris (Hydrex Honda) 1m28.205s
7 Sylvain Guintoli (Worx Crescent Suzuki) 1m28.279s
8 James Ellison (Airwaves Yamaha) 1m28.551s
9 Julien da Costa (MSS Colchester Kawasaki) 1m28.806s
10 Chris Walker (Motorpoint/Henderson Yamaha) 1m29.154s