Carlos Checa Storms To Pole In Donington Park

In the face of extremely cold conditions, Carlos Checa and the Althea Racing Team were celebrating at Donington Park this afternoon, having beaten off stiff competition to take their second consecutive pole position of the 2011 SBK season.

This morning’s track conditions made for a difficult second qualifying session and, due to a track temperature of only about 5˚C, only a handful of riders were able to improve on yesterday’s times. Carlos, already third in first qualifying yesterday, saw several of his rivals crash and decided together with his technicians that there was no point taking unnecessary risks and so concentrated instead on refining a few technical details. Yesterday’s best nevertheless meant that Checa qualified in third position overall for the afternoon’s Superpole.

In the afternoon’s free practice session times began to drop dramatically and Carlos, making constant improvements throughout the forty-five minute session, was able to record a fastest lap of 1m28.696, the fastest lap seen up to that point. Despite the persistant cold, Checa ducked under 1m29 several times with lap times that augur well for tomorrow if conditions remain similarly cold.

Superpole 1: in the first Superpole phase, and on a race tyre, Carlos made three fast laps on board his 1198, the last of which was fast enough to secure third position and safe passage to the second mini-session.

Superpole 2: with two qualifying tyres available, Checa made an exit with the first Q, immediately registering a flying 1m28.1 and returning to the garage, confident that he had done enough to finish among the top eight. He in fact closed the session in first position.

Superpole 3: during the last ten minute session, and taking advantage of the second Q, Carlos went even faster. At one point it seemed that he might go under 1m28 but although he didn’t quite make that, the 1m28.099 recorded was nevertheless a fantastic time and a new lap record (the track’s layout has undergone slight modifications since the last Donington round in 2009).

Carlos Checa
“I’m extremely satisfied to be in pole here at Donington, almost more so than I was at Phillip Island because I really didn’t expect it here today. We’ve been making constant improvement over the last two days and the small changes made along the way have paid off, the tyres worked well this afternoon and I was able to make the fast lap. The new Q tyre allowed us to make two fast laps and in the cold which isn’t easy. I am happy with what we have been able to achieve, especially in these cold conditions as you never know how it will go when it’s so different from one day to another and now we just have to see how it will be tomorrow before deciding on the race tyre. I hope the conditions don’t get worse but in the meantime I’m just going to enjoy this moment.”

Full results available here.