FUJIWARA BATTLES PAIN IN FRANCE Winston Ten Kate Honda’s Katsuaki Fujiwara qualified on the provisional second row of the grid in this afternoon’s opening qualifying session for Sunday’s final World Supersport championship race at Magny-Cours. The Japanese rider is still in considerable pain from the broken finger he sustained in last week’s heavy crash at Imola in Italy. Qualifying was headed by fellow Honda rider, Michel Fabrizio, as Fujiwara’s substitute Winston team-mate, Arie Vos, set the ninth fastest time at the 4.4km Magny-Cours circuit. The 29-year-old Dutch rider is standing in for 2005 World Supersport champion, Sébastien Charpentier, who is missing the Magny-Cours event through injury. Ronald ten Kate team manager: “Today with Kats it was just a case of getting him back into the groove after his big crash at Imola last Friday. It seems the speed is there already as he’s not that far away from the front row but his left hand is still giving him some pain. He’s being strong though, and I’m sure we can help him improve tomorrow to take a front row place on the grid for Sunday. I’m impressed with the performance of our own Flying Dutchman, Arie Vos. He quickly got over the initial ‘wow factor’ of joining the Ten Kate team and got on with the job this afternoon. He’s really not far away from the top five riders and we’ll keep trying to get everything right for him and help him get more used to the bike tomorrow. We asked Sébastien to give Arie some help and advice and he’s taking the job very seriously. Even though he’s not riding, he still wants to influence his side of the box! We don’t want to put any pressure on Arie, but I think with Sébastien’s help he could be the surprise of the weekend.” Katsuaki Fujiwara seventh fastest, 1m45.099s “My left hand is very sore and painful and it makes riding the bike very tiring. All I want to do now is go back to my motorhome and sleep! I’ll put some ice on the hand and keep it loose and hopefully we can improve the qualifying position tomorrow. I tried very hard in the last ten minutes of the session to improve my lap time but there were lots of riders crashing and yellow flags everywhere. I didn’t want to push too hard and risk crashing as well because that would just make the injury worse.” Arie Vos ninth fastest, 1m45.378s “Well, I’m certainly enjoying myself and the only problem out there is me, because the bike is perfect. I’m still learning my way around here and, looking at the sector times, it’s clear I have a problem with sector two. The first and third sectors are no problem because I’m only a couple of tenths off the fastest guys, but sector two drops me down a long way. Sébastien has been really helpful and I rode around here on a scooter with him yesterday. He knows where the problems are because he knows Magny-Cours so well and he’s very fast around here. I’ll go out with him again later and study his advice tonight but I’m looking forward to tomorrow already.” World Supersport, Magny-Cours provisional qualifying times: 1 Michel Fabrizio ITA (Honda) 1m44.113s, 2 Kevin Curtain AUS (Yamaha) 1:44.177, 3 Fabien Foret FRA (Honda) 1:44.311, 4 Broc Parkes AUS (Yamaha) 1:44.770, 5 Javier Fores ESP (Suzuki) 1:45.027, 6 Gianluca Nannelli ITA (Ducati) 1:45.079, 7 Katsuaki Fujiwara JPN (Winston Ten Kate Honda) 1:45.099, 8 Stephane Chambon FRA (Honda) 1:45.327, 9 Arie Vos (Winston Ten Kate Honda) 1:45.378, 10 Johan Stigefelt SWE (Honda) 1:45.454. More, from a press release issued by Yamaha Racing: Curtain and Parkes on the pace in Magny cours Yamaha Motor Germany’s Kevin Curtain overcame a low speed fall to record the second fastest time of the opening day at Magny Cours, with his team-mate Broc Parkes also in a provisional front row grid position, having set the fourth quickest overall time. The usual close competition in supersport saw the top three riders covered by only 0.198 seconds, at a track which exhibited two different characters and varying levels of grip. Misty morning conditions gave way to slightly improved afternoon weather, but the track surface proved to have better grip characteristics in the earlier, and untimed, session. Curtain was fastest man in the unofficial opening exchanges, Parkes fourth. Kevin Curtain “Things feel really good and the conditions were even better this morning than the afternoon, when the heat started to come out a little bit. We are testing a new Pirelli tyre here as well, so we spent some time trying that out. There were a lot of crashes in the afternoon session, one rider even fell twice! We tried something different with the suspension in the timed session but it didn’t suit the bike, and I had a little crash. It was just a small front ender. I ran back to the pits, jumped on the spare bike and got myself up to second position.” Broc Parkes “Things are really good today and I went faster than my Friday time from last year. You can’t ask for too much more than that. I did almost the whole session on one tyre and only changed it near the end, when I went to set a faster lap time. I went out and in the first two section times I was fastest then hit some traffic. So my time would have been better with a clear track. The main thing is we are competitive and can go even faster.”