CHARPENTIER FASTEST ON THE ISLAND Winston Ten Kate Honda’s Sébastien Charpentier set the fastest time in today’s first qualifying session for Sunday’s second round World Supersport championship race at Phillip Island in Australia. His Japanese team-mate and championship leader, Katsuaki Fujiwara, was fifth fastest. In warm sunshine, Frenchman Charpentier continued his recent good form, lapping the 4.4km circuit near Melbourne in a time of 1:35.999 the only rider to break the 1:36 barrier and was 0.3s faster than his nearest challenger, Honda-mounted Michel Fabrizio. Ronald ten Kate team manager: We’re pretty happy with the way things have been going on our first day here at Phillip Island. We’ve still got some more work to do to improve the bike for both Sébastien and Katsuaki but we’re progressing in the right direction. There are a lot of areas where we can improve the bike a little bit, like gearing, suspension and geometry. Phillip Island is also very technical, very much a riders’ circuit, and I’m sure we’ll see both riders improve their times as they get more laps under their belt. Sébastien Charpentier fastest, 1:35.999 Yes, it’s all going OK and I really enjoy riding here at Phillip Island. We’ve been working on different tyre and suspension combinations today and it’s going fine. We have a few more things to try but I think we’re pretty close to deciding what tyres we want to use in the race. We’ll try to give that set-up a longer test tomorrow and try to get pole position like we had at the first round in Qatar. Katsuaki Fujiwara fifth fastest, 1:37.177 We’re trying to get the right feeling for the bike and I think we have lots of work to do tonight and tomorrow. It’s a good circuit but the wind is blowing quite hard and it pushes the bike wide when we go through the long left-hander at turn two. Apart from that we have some more time tomorrow but it is really Sunday that counts so, as long as I can start near the front, it should be OK. World Supersport, Phillip Island provisional qualifying times: 1 Sébastien Charpentier FRA (Winston Ten Kate Honda) 1:35.999, 2 Michel Fabrizio ITA (Honda) 1:36.327, 3 Kevin Curtain AUS (Yamaha) 1:36.932, 4 Fabien Foret FRA (Honda) 1:37.075, 5 Katsuaki Fujiwara JPN (Winston Ten Kate Honda) 1:37.177, 6 Johan Stigefelt SWE (Honda) 1:37.912, 7 Christophe Cogan FRA (Suzuki) 1:37.983, 8 Broc Parkes AUS (Yamaha) 1:38.021, 9 Gianluca Nannelli ITA (Ducati) 1:38.242, 10 Stephane Chambon FRA (Honda) 1:38.424. More, from a press release issued by Yamaha Racing: Yamaha Motor Germany’s Australian duo Kevin Curtain and Broc Parkes enjoyed a productive first day in preparation for their home round of the Supersport World Championship, finishing the day’s opening qualifying session in third and eighth place respectively despite not finding the ideal suspension set-up for their YZF-R6s. Sunny conditions allowed the local heroes to spend the day working on set-up of their R6s ahead of Sunday’s 21 lap race, with Curtain setting his best time of 1’36.932 midway through the session, despite not being totally happy with grip levels from the rear of his machine. Parkes also struggled to find a good setting on his R6 and finished just over a second behind his team-mate, with a 1’38.021 on his final lap pushing him up to a provisional second row spot. Fastest rider of the day was Frenchman Sebastien Charpentier (Honda) with a lap time of 1’35.999. Final qualifying to determine Sunday’s grid position takes place tomorrow afternoon at 13:45 local time. Kevin Curtain (Yamaha Motor Germany) “We’re really struggling for rear grip today and it’s quite strange as it just shouldn’t be the case with the improvement we made to the bike. Last year we struggled all year for front grip and struggled with the rear, but here it is the opposite: the front is great but the rear grip isn’t what we expected. I was following Charpentier for about a lap, until his team put out the board to say I was following and he let me past. I could keep up with him until the exits of turn 11 and turn 12, where I was just sliding. That’s a big problem here because if you can’t get good drive out of the last corner you’re going to get hosed down the straight. That shouldn’t be the case on a new tyre so we’re going to have to have a long think about it now to try and find a solution for tomorrow.” Broc Parkes (Yamaha Motor Germany) “Not the best qualifying I’ve had. We’ve not quite had the set-up today and it’s a bit of a surprise after the improvements we made at the last test in Valencia. I was actually faster when we tested here in January so I know that I can go faster tomorrow – I have to, because the front few guys were really on it today.”