The Basic Qualifying and Superpole sessions for the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike class have been canceled due to rain Friday at Mid-Ohio. A rain shower hit the track just as Daytona SportBike Group A (the faster group) was preparing to go out for their Basic Qualifying session. The rain stopped, the track dried and activities resumed at 3:20 p.m. local time, but the Daytona SportBike class’ remaining sessions were canceled. The Daytona SportBike grid will now be determined by the Final Qualifying session scheduled for Saturday morning. Friday’s revised schedule includes: 3:20 3:40 p.m. SuperSport Practice 3:50 4:20 p.m. MotoGT Qualifying 4:30 5:00 p.m. American Superbike Superpole Some riders, including Team M4 Suzuki’s Martin Cardenas, the Daytona SportBike Championship point leader, and Erion Honda’s Jake Zemke, appreciated AMA Pro Racing’s decision to delay on-track activities due to the rain, but Zemke questioned the decision making behind which classes and sessions were included in the post-rain schedule. “If the track’s dry I’d think you would send out the class that hasn’t had a chance to qualify yet,” said Zemke. “Why send [American] Superbike out for Superpole? They already qualified. Now if it rains tomorrow, we [Daytona SportBike] don’t get a chance to qualify. But I don’t know. They may be obligated to the track to hold a Superpole session today.” Update: According to AMA Pro Racing Vice President Marketing/Communications Ollie Dean, Friday’s revised schedule was made to keep to the original time-certain schedule as much as possible. Daytona SportBike’s Basic Qualifying and Superpole sessions were canceled with the hope that the weather forecast will hold true and allow the class to have its regularly scheduled Final Qualifying Saturday morning. More, from a press release issued by Team M4 Suzuki: NO QUALIFYING FOR M4 SUZUKI ON FRIDAY AT MID-OHIO Afternoon showers that hit the Lexington, OH area just prior to the scheduled start of the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Basic Qualifying session resulted in an abbreviated day’s work for Team M4 Suzuki at Mid-Ohio on Friday. With Basic Qualifying and Superpole ultimately canceled, the squad only took to the track for a single morning free session during the day. The grid for the weekend’s twin Daytona SportBike finals will be decided based on Saturday’s Final Qualifying session, meaning that there will be no single-flying lap Superpole shootout for pole for a second consecutive weekend. Team M4 Suzuki has earned the last five pole positions in the class with Jason DiSalvo sweeping the most recent four Superpole outings and Martin Cardenas picking up the pole in a traditional session last time out at Laguna Seca. The two will look to up that streak on Saturday before setting their sights on Saturday afternoon’s 21-lap contest. Points leader Cardenas was fifth quickest aboard his GSX-R600 in Friday’s practice, circulating at 1:28.982, just 0.395 seconds off of first. Fourth-ranked DiSalvo was tenth best at 1:29.344. At the conclusion of the day Colombian Cardenas said, “We only had the one session today but it went really positive. The bike was working quite well throughout the practice. We tried the other bike with a different setting but the first bike was better and I think we’re in good shape for qualifying tomorrow. “We tested here recently and that helped a lot. The bike that I liked had the setting we found at the test.” Despite his Laguna Seca disappointment that saw Martin crash out of the lead while seeking a seventh victory on the season two weeks ago, Cardenas still boasts a considerable 39-point advantage that he’ll look to further extend this weekend. “I’m glad to be back racing again after what happened at Laguna,” Cardenas said. “I’m looking for a good result and hopefully another win.”