BSB: Haslam pleased with pole after mistake at Melbourne

Leon Haslam stamped his authority on his MCE British Superbike rivals with a dominant pole position at Donington Park this afternoon.

The JG Speedfit Kawasaki man will start tomorrow’s opening race from the top spot with rival Shane Byrne next to him on the grid as the 2016 Showdown starts to heat up.

However, the series leader is not yet decided on which tyres he will run for tomorrow’s 20 lap races after storming to three victories last time out at Oulton Park on the harder option Pirelli rubber.   

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“Getting pole is always important!” said Haslam. “It stamps your authority ahead of race day, but of course it’s tomorrow that is the priority! I’m pretty pleased to get pole as I made a mistake on my quick lap at the Melbourne loop but it worked out. My aim was to get in to the 1’27s and while I’m not sure whether we’d have got there or not we’d have been a bit closer.

“My race pace is really good on the hard but the zero offers so much more grip, it’s 0.5/0.6 faster over the first six or so laps so we need to work out what is going to be the better tyre. We made the right call with the tyre at Oulton but we’ll see after morning warm-up what we go with as it depends on track temperature.”

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