After the historic win at 24 Heures Moto Le Mans, that took them to the championship lead, F.C.C. TSR Honda France grabbed also pole position at 8 Hours of SlovakiaRing. The team did it by an average laptime in 2’04″362, resulting from the laps performed by Josh Hook (2’04″619), Freddy Foray (2’04″217) and Alan Techer (2’04″221). The legendary All Japan squad, that started a commercial partnership with Honda France at last year’s Bol d’Or, showed a great pace during the Qualifying sessions and this gave them an amazing pole position at their first race with the new CBR 1000RR Fireblade SP2.
POLE FOR F.C.C. TSR HONDA – After triumphing at Le Mans with the “old” Fireblade, F.C.C. TSR Honda France chose to contest the race in Slovakia with the new one (but they had already raced with that at 2018 Suzuka 8 Hours, where they ranked 3rd…) and they immediately grabbed the pole position. After the positive test at Alcarras (Spain), the average time of the #5 Fireblade was just 80 milliseconds (!) faster than the one of YART Yamaha, ranking 2nd. This is a wonderful result for Bridgestone (in first and second place) and especially for F.C.C. TSR Honda, whose last pole position dated back to 2009 Suzuka 8 Hours.
YART, SERT AND GMT94 ARE BEHIND – 2018 8 Hours of SlovakiaRing will start tomorrow at 12:30 local time and F.C.C. TSR Honda will have to fight with YART Yamaha, in second place with Broc Parkes (2’04″312), Marvin Fritz (2’04″553) and Max Neukirchner (2’04″433, replacing injured Takuya Fujita). YART were the only team going faster than 2’04” in night Free Practice. The Austria team is followed by Suzuki Endurance Racing Team (Vincent Philippe, Etienne Masson and Gregg Black, all having great potential) and GMT94 Yamaha (Niccolò Canepa, David Checa e Mike Di Meglio). The reigning World Champions will try to repeat last year’s amazing win. The other teams in front positions are SRC Kawasaki (Randy De Puniet, Jeremy Guarnoni and Julien Da Costa, who replaces injured Mathieu Gines), NRT48 BMW, Honda Endurance Racing and the first “home” team: Mercury Racing (ex-BMW CSEU). In Superstock class the pole position went to Moto Ain Yamaha, 9th in the overall classification.